A while back, I wrote about cereal and portion control, and how the bowl very much affects consumption unless you use a measuring cup.
Unless your weakness is going back for seconds (and thirds?), using smaller dishes and bowls can significantly help you manage your portions when you eat at home. For most of us most of the time, the plate/bowl/glass needs to be full in order for us to be satisfied with the serving.
I was chatting online with a friend recently. “I have a picture I have to send you!” he said.
His parents had received wine glasses as a wedding gift in 1977. Many of them had broken over time, and they were recently gifted a new set.
The picture he sent me was a side-by-side: 1977 glasses on the left, 2011 glasses on the right:
Now, I don’t know all that much about drinking wine — I have never tasted one that I liked — so he filled me in.
The standard serving size for a glass of wine is about 5 ounces (four servings per bottle), and that will fill the glass on the left a smidge over half way. Five ounces of wine “looks pathetic” (in his words) in the glass on the right.
Suppose you know that a serving of wine is roughly half of a wine glass and pour that way. You’re getting about twice as much in today’s glasses! So your one glass of wine is really two glasses of wine.
I suspect — though I haven’t looked — that you can find wine glasses that aren’t enormous, but you’d need to do some looking around.
How big are your dishes, bowls, glasses, wine glasses, etc? Do you think this helps or hinders your eating and drinking habits?
Posted by Shawn on 25 April 2011 at 11:48
Yes, it’s possible to find non-ridiculously sized glasses – I have some – but I had to specifically look for them. They certainly weren’t the ones featured on display at bed bath & beyond!
Posted by Heather on 1 May 2011 at 20:33
Glad to know it’s possible. We were unable to find a set of bowls and dishes that had both bowls and dishes that were reasonably-sized. The size of bowls in particular was disturbing, so we went with smaller bowls.
Posted by Laura on 25 April 2011 at 12:12
We have small glasses for this reason. Our juice glasses are from Crate and Barrel (8 oz glasses), and we found small Reidel wine glasses (I think they are 6 oz glasses). We handful of larger glasses, but we usually only use those for water. I love the smaller glasses, it’s so much easier to control your portion size.
Posted by Heather on 1 May 2011 at 20:34
Portion sizes are so distorted nowadays that when many people see “one serving” of something, they think they’re being cheated or that the portion is too small. It’s unfortunate…