SuperFoodsRx and Portion Control
|
|
|
 By Dr. Steven Pratt
The amounts of food many of us eat are out of control. When people learn that they should be eating 5 to 7 servings of vegetables a day many people are shocked. They claim they could never eat that much food. It's quite true that one couldn't eat 7 servings of vegetables a day if their serving size duplicated the portions in many restaurants. The FDA says that the standard serving of pasta, for example, is one cup. In most restaurants, pasta portions typically measure about three cups. That's about three servings! We'd be eating vegetables out of buckets if we extrapolated from restaurant portion sizes. I believe that many people have been discouraged from following very good dietary guidelines because they've come to believe that a serving is a huge super size amount. They believe that if they really ate that much, they'd gain a tremendous amount of weight.
|
A survey by the American Institute for Cancer Research found that more than 25% of American's polled said that they decided how much food to eat at a single sitting on the basis of how much food they were served. |
When it comes to fruits and vegetables, getting the optimum number of servings isn't hard at all when you understand what a serving size really is. For most fruits and vegetables, it's a half-cup.
Here is the SuperFoodsRx breakdown of serving sizes in various food categories:
Vegetables
1/2 cup cooked or raw vegetables
1 cup raw greens
1/2 cup vegetable juice
Fruits
1/2 cup chopped fruit
1/2 cup fruit juice
1 medium piece of fruit
2 tbsp raisins, 3 prunes
Vegetarian Protein
1 egg or 2 egg whites
3 oz tofu or tempeh
1/2 cup cooked beans or lentils
Nuts
2 Tablespoons peanut butter or 1 ounce raw nuts and seeds
Fish & Meat
3 ounces cooked lean meat, poultry or fish
Whole Grains
1 slice whole wheat bread
1/2 cup cooked grain or pasta
High Calcium Foods
1/2 cup non-fat cottage cheese
8 oz non-fat yogurt or milk
Fats
1 oz. (24) almonds, 15 walnut halves
1 tablespoon oil
3/8 avocado
|
Here are some tips from the American Dietetic Association on how to
recognize appropriate serving sizes:
- A medium potato should be the size of a computer mouse.
- An average bagel should be the size of a hockey puck.
- A cup of fruit the size of a baseball.
- A cup of lettuce is four leaves.
- Three ounces of meat is the size of a cassette tape.
- Three ounces of grilled fish is the size of your checkbook.
- One ounce of cheese is the size of four dice.
- One teaspoon of peanut butter equals one dice.
- And One ounce of snack foods--pretzels, etc. equals a large handful.
|
|
