Portion Sizes

 

I was born in 1964 and I can tell, back in the day, we didn’t eat like people are eating today.  Ingredient lists were shorter and premade items, like bread, contained REAL food.  Eating out, even at fast food restaurants, was not the norm.  It was saved for special occasions and even then the amount of food served and the quality of that food was dramatically different.

 

A simple well balanced meal - pork chop, dinner roll, green beans

My mom made our meals for us every single day.  She cooked from scratch.  You cleaned your plate, nothing was allowed to go to waste, but we weren’t overstuffed when we left the table.  Portion sizes and the plates our meals were served on were much smaller.  So was our glassware.  We weren’t allowed to drink a tumbler full of anything, except water, and she didn’t supply us with endless amounts of Kool-Aid or sodas, again those things were only for special occasions like a party or a picnic.  If you were outside playing and got thirsty you just got a drink out of the hose.

 

A nine inch dinner plate with a six inch sandwich plate plus bowls

One cup & two cup bowls

I was visiting with a friend of mine recently that told me she and her husband were focusing on portion control rather than dieting and found that by going back to the old ways of serving meals they were more than satisfied at the end of a meal, their groceries were lasting a whole lot longer saving them quite a bit of money not to mention shopping trips.  They, like me, were also making sure to eat healthy, unprocessed food and found they felt a lot better after eating.  They are also losing some extra weight that neither one of them needs to be carrying.

 

After doing quite a bit of research to reacquaint myself with the portion sizes and meals of yesteryear I decided to step back in time and eat very similarly to the way I used to.  I’m digging out my old cookbooks and making “new” old meal plans.  I’m getting to eat food I haven’t had in ages and I’m really enjoying it.  It’s been really fun!

 

Six ounce coffee cup

This glass holds six ounces too

A lot of the dishes I already keep in my cupboard are some that have been around since the 50s, 60s and 70s so I was all set as far as having the appropriate sized plates and bowls to serve my meals on.  In the sixties a dinner plate was 8.5 to 9 inches in diameter.  Nowadays, the average dinner plate is 12 inches in diameter.  I got rid of all of my larger dinner plates several years ago keeping only two of those plates and I use them as platters now.

 

Way back when, a glass of milk was one eight ounce (1 cup) serving.  A glass of juice was four to six ounces (1/2 to 3/4 cup).  A serving size of soda was six ounces (half the can).  A serving of meat was four to six ounces, about the size of a deck of cards.  A baked potato was about the size of a computer mouse.  If you had a larger potato you just cut it in half and shared it with someone else.  You didn’t eat the whole thing.  Most of the old cookbooks have this all listed out for reference.

 

Brunch - homemade granola w/milk, hard boiled egg, dried plums

My great grandmother's muffin tin is much smaller than ones sold now

This fits in perfectly with my desire to focus on my health and to make the most of what I have.  I’m excited to get into the kitchen and be creative each day when I’m cooking.  There’s a bit of nostalgia, I’m enjoying my meals so much and having a lot of fun with it.  I’ll let you know as time goes on how things go and how I feel.  I’m thinking this is going to be a very good experience.