Plates

, a “local voice” by Kevin Ellis

The Dinner Plate

“I was watching Nightly News the other day and this report came up that after listening to it, I

hit myself in the head and said, “Of course this makes sense now.”

The report was about our dinner plates and how they have gotten much bigger since the 1950’s.

Now I am not just referring to the portion sizes, we all know about that and that is not news, but

the plate itself. In the 1950’s the average size of a dinner plate was 9” in diameter. Now in 2010

it is 12” in diameter. This is a 33% increase in just the size of our plates!

So now you may say, so what? Our plates our bigger what does that mean? Well, back in the

50’s when you made 2 eggs and 2 strips of bacon it filled the plate. Now by making that same

breakfast meal with the same amount of food, it doesn’t even dent the plate. You have to make

3 eggs and 5 strips of bacon just to fill the plate. That is a 50% increase in the food we put on

our plate. Have you ever looked at the size of a restaurant plate? They are huge! Back in the

50’s they were 33% smaller. Here is the funny thing as I see it. Once you finished your plate of

food in the 50’s for the most part you were satisfied. As a nation in 2010 we still finish our plates and in the end we are consuming 500 more calories each day because of it.

You see, people may try to control their eating but what I have found out is that we eat with our

eyes and not our heads. We fill our plates and then sit down. Now if our plates are 33% bigger

than they were in the 1950’s aren’t we putting more food on them and aren’t we consuming

more calories because of that? Some dietitians call what we do now as “mindless eating”, eatingwith our eyes rather than our appetites.

Did you know that the average male waist size in the 1950’s was 35” and for women it was

30”and now in 2010 that average size for a male is 39.7” and for women 37”? Did you know thatin the 50’s the average weight for males was 166 pounds and for women it was 140 pounds and now it is 195 pounds for men and a whopping 165 pounds for women. (I got this from Universityof California, Berkley). Good old “Portion Distortion” has really set in and gotten us to where we are today.

So what is the solution? How can we control this? Even our cups are bigger than they were in

the 50’s. What is the answer? Personally, now that I now these facts, I am going to make sure

that I don’t fill my plate and if it is filled I will make every attempt to not eat everything on it but

save some for another day or time. My attitude will no longer be, “I have to finish everything on

my plate.” But, “I am satisfied now I should stop and relax.”

Now that you know these facts,…what are you going to do about it..?”