Dishing It Out: Portion Control
One trigger for overeating in both children and adults is the tendency to pile too much on the plate. Over the past several decades, average portion sizes have climbed considerably for packaged foods, fast food, and on the restaurant menu. When faced with a beyond-heaping helping, many people do what comes naturally — they eat it, based on the “waste-not-want-not” theory and the “I'm getting my money's worth whether I'm hungry or not” principle.
Remember that your child can't handle adult-sized portions. Start small — a tablespoon or two of each dish — with the assurance that your child can have more if he wants it. Giving him a variety of healthful choices in small doses will also minimize food waste for those dishes he decides he doesn't care for.
Weighing in Portions
Keeping servings to appropriate sizes at home is an easy step towards fitness that you can implement today. It can also better equip you and your child to recognize overload when eating out. For packaged foods, the serving size is indicated right on the nutrition facts label. For meat, poultry, and fish, the average serving size is usually three ounces.
Since it isn't always practical to carry a kitchen scale around with you, following are a few typical serving sizes and points of reference for estimating portion sizes:
Three ounces of fish, meat, or poultry is the size of a deck of cards or the palm of your hand.
A cup of fruit or yogurt is the size of a baseball or a clenched fist.
One teaspoon of butter or mayonnaise is the size of a thimble or a thumb tip (top knuckle to tip).
One ounce of cheese is the size of an AA battery or your entire thumb.
The serving size on the nutrition facts label and the recommended serving size based on the USDA food pyramid are not always equivalent. Food pyramid serving sizes are based on portion sizes using standard household measures (such as a cup) and also on nutrient content in a serving. Nutrition facts serving sizes are based on a reference amount of food that is a typical portion based on data from national food consumption surveys. Sometimes servings are similar, and sometimes they aren't. Always check the label.
A 20-ounce vending machine bottle of soda contains one serving, right? Wrong. Look at the nutrition facts closely, and you'll see that it actually contains two and a half 8-ounce servings. In this case, your child's calorie intake could have been more than twice what you might have assumed if you hadn't read the label carefully.
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Preventing Portion Creep
From the grocery store to the kitchen table, there are plenty of ways to stop portions from growing out of control:
Downsize. Buy small. If it's truly more economical to buy the large size, then have reusable containers or bags on hand and divvy the food up into sensible portions after you get it home.
Weigh in. Invest in a kitchen scale and a set of wet and dry measuring tools.
Don't eat out of the bag. Kids who snack directly from the bag or box can't see how much they're really eating. Measure out a serving into a bowl instead.
Serve yourselves. Let your kids dish out their own portions, and they'll most likely regulate the size more appropriately to their hunger than you will. If they tend to overdo it, tell them to start small and have seconds if needed.
Sharing meals and boxing half-helpings for home can help control your portions when eating out. For more on sensible and nutritious restaurant eating, see Chapter 9.
Quashing the Clean Plate Syndrome
Children know when they're full. Don't make cleaning the plate a requirement for leaving the dinner table. It's an arbitrary benchmark (especially if you dished up the meal to begin with). You'll only end up teaching your child to disregard their satiety signal, and he'll become accustomed to eating past his hunger. Using dessert as a reward for getting through a meal is also a bad idea for the same reason. In addition, it will set up your child to expect dessert every evening rather than as an occasional treat.
How many calories your child needs daily is based on her age, gender, and activity level. Chapter 5 has detailed information on the caloric requirements of girls and boys by age and activity level. Use the nutrition facts label on packaged food to determine calorie count, and pick up a good calorie-counting book for fresh produce and other unlabeled items. If you like gadgets and can afford the price tag, there are food scales on the market that also calculate calories of a given helping.
Should you say no if your child says she's too full to finish her meal but then wants to have some of what the rest of the family is having for dessert? The best way to get around this dilemma is to always make dessert something nutritious rather than a sugar-splurge, like a fresh fruit salad or a fruit and yogurt parfait.
