supersizing hits home
by Jason Smith

t's official: Americans are eating larger portions than we did twenty years ago. But not just Biggie fries and Extra Value Meals. We're also supersizing what we eat at home.

.: Photo by Jason Smith; click to enlarge. :.

Samara Joy Nielsen and Barry Popkin examined data from three national food-consumption surveys that the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted as early as 1977 and as late as 1998. In the surveys, more than 60,000 Americans reported their portion sizes at each meal.

Nielsen and Popkin found that a typical fast-food hamburger portion—the amount people actually ate—was 6.1 ounces in 1977. By 1996, the fast-food burger portion had grown to 7.2 ounces. The average homemade hamburger portion was 5.7 ounces in 1977, but had ballooned to 8.4 ounces by 1996.

e also gulped down bigger soft drinks and stuffed ourselves with greater portions of salty snacks, Mexican foods, and desserts during the same twenty-year period—and our obesity rates doubled.

Americans ate the largest portions at fast-food places, Nielsen says, and the smallest at other restaurants. "What surprised me most was that the portion sizes at home were increasing as well," says Nielsen, a doctoral student in nutritional epidemiology.

Previous studies have shown that portion sizes in restaurants have been getting larger, but Nielsen and Popkin may be the first to document that at any given meal Americans are actually eating larger portions than they did only a few decades ago.

We're also getting less exercise than people did in the past, says Popkin, professor of nutrition. Since we're eating more and exercising less, we increase our risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and other health threats.

s supersizing actually affecting how we eat at home? "While our research did not exactly study 'supersizing,' it shows its impact is seen in the very large portion-size increases in the past decade," Popkin says. "I believe fast-food restaurants and soft-drink marketers pushed to change the culture of eating, and this led to changes at home." Popkin says similar shifts have occurred when fast-food companies enter the markets of other countries.

"Dietary patterns are rapidly shifting in the United States, and these changes are important contributors to the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes facing Americans," Popkin says. "Americans are eating too much food. The problem is the combination of a rapid increase in eating at fast-food establishments, an increase in foods such as cheeseburgers and soft drinks, and the portion sizes we report in this new study."

A report on these findings appeared in the January 22, 2003, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Department of Nutrition, School of Public Health, Carolina Population Center, and the National Institutes of Health provided funding.

Jason Smith is online designer and print production manager of Endeavors.
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