One of the big issues in eating healthfully is portion control.  If you eat out a lot, you know eactly what I mean.  Mixing bowls of salad and pasta.  Sandwiches so big, you can’t get your hands around them.  All you can eat offers.

Even if the food is healthy, you can eat too much of it, and portion size seems to keep growing.  It does make sense though.  For a restaurant, food isn’t their biggest cost.  Labor is. (In some places, rent is high cost too.)  Paying the host, the wait staff, the sommelier, the bus staff, the prep and line cooks, the chefs, the executive chef, and the cleaning crew is where the money goes.  Even high quality ingredients can’t compete.  So, you need to raise your prices.  How do you make sure that your customers don’t complain too much?  Make the portions bigger.  The customer thinks they are getting more food for the extra money.  Unfortunately, the customer is also getting extra calories.

So, what do you do?  You can just accept that you might have to leave food on the plate.  Depending on the restaurant, you might be able to use your fork to draw a line down the plate and take half home for lunch the next day.  (That works great with sandwiches, not as well with other foods.)  You can share an entree with your dining partner. (There may be an extra charge for this.)  Or, you can sit at the bar and order a few appetizers to share.

At home, you can control the portion size.  Here are lots of ways to do this.

• You can only cook enough to give each person the appropriate portion.  If it isn’t cooked, it won’t be eaten.  If you have to cook more than you want (such as, roasting a whole chicken), put the extra away BEFORE serving.
• Plate the meals before serving, rather than placing serving dishes on the table.  If you want more, you can go to the kitchen and get it, but it requires more effort than just grabbing a bowl.
• Use smaller plates.  I have gorgeous plates that I love to use.  But they are HUGE!  a full meallooks like a light snack.  I often use the salad plates for the main course. It makes the portion size smaller, but the plate looks full.  Amazing how that tricks your mind into believing you’re full.
• Read labels.  What labels consider the "serving size" is often very artificial.  I have seen small frozen pizzas described as 3 servings.  By my estimation, that serving size is 4 bites.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about eating food that’s fresh and well-flavored.