As Ozempic Shrinks Appetites, Some Restaurants Offer Miniature Meals | Hacker News Reader

As Ozempic Shrinks Appetites, Some Restaurants Offer Miniature Meals

nytimes.com

23 pointsmikhael21 comments

I hope this trend continues, but the framing here is odd. Restaurant meal portions in the US are huge compared to other countries. One doesn't need to be on a diet or taking diet drugs to benefit from smaller portions (especially paired with a smaller bill).

True. Though if you’re paying for sit-down service anyway, the marginal cost of ingredients is relatively low, especially in places with pricey real estate or where tipped wage is higher than the federal minimum. Might as well pay a few extra bucks for the larger serving and have leftovers, IMO.

Last time I dined out, we noticed the smaller portions (mostly cutting out the potatoes or rice that always used to be served under each entree). What caused us to notice it? We had room for dessert afterward! (And yes, the restaurant made more money from us that way, too.)

> especially paired with a smaller bill

It won't be, at least long term.

"... miniature meals"

Or as we call them in the rest of the world: meals.

https://www.infographicsarchive.com/infographic-serving-size...

Purely anecdotally, but we had a US team member visit us in the UK and his understanding of food quality was purely driven by size and not quality.

It didn't matter whether it was haute cuisine or grey sludge, if there was lots of it then it was the best meal in the world

Something else for me to apologize about: sorry, average Americans have no taste. There is nothing but greasy spoon garbage where I live. In central London or Paris, I could live on takeout.

Also:

Q1: Was it a Darden-like chain where everything was prepared in a strict, structured manner?

Q2: Was actual tasting involved, or was it simply superficial evaluation of plating?

Q3: Was tasting done in a way to conceal the preparer(s) and/or server(s) to reduce bias?

There's a restaurant chain in Texas called "Cheddar's" that doesn't (or didn't when I saw it last) have any nutritional or serving size information at all, not in restaurants and not online. Just expect all the salt, cream, tallow, HFCS, and heart attacks.

There aren't many restaurant choices around and none are any good.

https://media.cheddars.com/en_us/pdf/Cheddars-Nutrition-Guid...

Like I said in another comment, this was 12-13 years ago.

Cheddars is nationawide and it does have nutritional info on the menu.

Its also kinda ass

Like I said this was years ago, probably 2013, prior to acquisition by Darden and before the internet archive has any records. It was shit then.

I am guessing that price would be almost the same/slightly reduced?

Fake correlation. Every time food manufacturers or sellers reduce portions there's a tendency to try and frame it as "for the users' health" when it's really an economic/profit reason.

Not like the general populace is taking ozempic to the level where this would influence menus yet.

I read an article lately claiming that supermarket shops were down by a fraction of a percent due to ozempic.

Way down the article it then considered that it may be due to the massively increasing cost of food

Many restaurants could shrink portions to reasonable sizes, and that would be a good thing.

But when I spend a lot of money on a meal, and I’m considering stopping at a drive-through on my way home… it ruins the experience. I never go back because it feels like being scammed.

I wonder why expensive restaurants tend to have small portions? High quality ingredients are expensive, but that can’t be the whole reason.

At an expensive restaurant you're not paying for food, but for experience. Smaller portions let you eat more types of food and thus get more experience. If you want to pay for food, not experience, a grocery store is a better option.

In theory maybe, but in practice nobody is ordering multiple entrees at a high end restaurant. The restaurant might not even let a guest do that. It’s just less total food, not smaller portions of many dishes.

You can say that, but thats not how it actually works in practice. You get the same variety of food at expensive spots, just smaller portions. Perhaps an unusual selection, but no greater variety in the same meal.

And no, im still paying for the food. Fuck the experience. The experience of being at a restaurant ranges from obnoxious to mildly irritating and its unrelated to how nice the place is.

For ages I have been wishing that one could go into just about any restaurant and order a meal in small, medium, or large. I would almost always order small.

https://archive.ph/teFBL

Shrinkflation, but now it’s a feature.

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