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Comment by JabavuAdams | Hacker News Reader

Don't underestimate upward drift in what's considered a normal portion.

When I travel to the US, it feels like they're serving way to much food, from an urban Canadian perspective. The portions just look huge to me, but apparently this is considered normal.

When I eat with my parents-in-law (who are perfectly fit), their portions look small and unsatisfying to me. I'm about 20 pounds overweight. When I eat their portion size, I don't get hungry -- it just feels like I'm being shorted.

We need to re-calibrate.

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When my wife and I went there from Italy, we had a rule where we always split entrees at restaurants - otherwise we got way too much food.

The worst part is, with time, you get used to the large portions. The "finish all the food on your plate" habit from childhood turns against you.

I feel exactly the same way and I've lived in the US all my life. I often take home enough to have a complete meal the next day. I don't really know why restaurants serve such gigantic proportions... I guess there are enough people that eat it all to make it worthwhile.

Sadly, I think it comes down to simple economics.

The marginal costs to a restaurant of a small amount of additional food on your plate is minimal. The downsides aren't that great either...assuming the price to the customer of a bit of extra food is the same, the people who want extra food will be happy, and those that don't just don't have to eat it.

Now ask that same restaurant to start serving smaller portions, in comparison with their competition. They haven't really cut too much in costs, but suddenly they're the guys with wimpy portion sizes, while the restaurant next door serves up a full, satisfying meal.

I think we're just seeing the result of a market that's catering to the unfortunate preferences of us, the consumers.

Yeah, restaurants/grocery stores definitely compete more on quantity than quality, at least for some things, in the US, than in "Europe" (meaning that corner of Europe that I'm familiar with), where people will discriminate amongst products and buy the better ones.

That might very well be true, but then there should be a small number of slightly (but not all that much) more expensive restaurants, that will rather focus on a bit of upscale food.

> restaurants serve such gigantic proportions

This is only true at cheap restaurants. High quality food does not come in large portions. Stop going to garbage restaurants.

We're discussing this in the context of public health.

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