On food portion size

[beautifulduckweed]

I've been craving muffins but lacking the energy and initiative to make my own, so I decided to buy a six-pack from Trader Joe's, because while not as good as home-made, it lacks most of the gross stuff normally packed into store-bought muffins, like mono- and diglycerides, mold inhibiting chemicals, etc. This morning, as I grabbed one from the pack to bring to school, I noticed that the label said "Mini-Muffins."

These are not mini-muffins. These are the size muffins I would make when I bake, and there's nothing "mini" about them. These muffins, by my estimation, probably contain somewhere in the area of 300 calories. There's nothing "mini" about that, either; that's just over 1/4 of my ideal daily caloric intake. These muffins are "mini" only when compared to the monstrosities from Costco, which clock in between 610 and 690 calories.

It astonishes me how we're continually desensitized when it comes to serving size, because food manufacturers want to push more on us. The larger size catches our eye and fools us into thinking we're getting a better value, and the bump in ingredient cost is minimal compared to the cost of everything else. And because we don't bother to divvy our muffins into halves (the Costco muffins should be cut into thirds or quarters if we want to go for anything resembling a reasonable serving size), we end up eating the whole damn thing, or tossing the leftovers.

Anyway. Mini-muffins, my ass. The fact that they're called "mini" is kind of obscene.

Comments

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

That is a pretty great tag.

I love those Costco muffins, but, yeah, they need to be cut up. Although sometimes I eat the whole damn thing because...it's there?

[rat-bastird.livejournal.com]

I freeze the chocolate ones and eat half for a desert. NOM!

[leahseraph.livejournal.com]

Yarg. My plan is to loose a bunch of weight this spring by simply cooking for myself all the time. With as much butter as I want.

[zizz.livejournal.com]

hi! i totally hear you. i keep hearing commercials on the radio for these so-called "mini meals" at mcdonalds, that consist of a burger, fries, and a drink, but the fries and drink are the "small" size, so i guess that's why they count as "mini". mini, my ass. my ass would not be mini if i ate their mini-meals. way to not be taken in!

and incidentally, i realized i never sent your little package and i fully accept that i suck and i will get it to you i promise.

[bonobo23.livejournal.com]

Word.

[benefitz.livejournal.com]

Hitler cat with panda is cute. That is all.

[benefitz.livejournal.com]

WAIT! THAT IS NOT ALL! Booksigning? Powells?

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Look here for a short recap, an even shorter video and some pictures: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/a-recap-of-the-powells-reading/#com

I'll call you soon and tell you MOAR.

Love you!

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

I agree that food portions in America (in restaurants in particular - after all, you can choose the portion size of foods you make at home) are often really oversized, but I there's one part of this that doesn't make sense to me: Why should food manufacturers "want to push more on us"? Wouldn't they rather sell us smaller amounts of food for the same price?

I suppose the implication is, they want us to buy more food than we really need - but really, how much can a manufacturer control that? Nothing stops you from cutting one of your muffins in half and eating it half at a time. I'm sure that food manufacturers are guilty of any number of evil business practices, but there may be some additional source to American gluttony. They're tools of the market as much as manipulators of it.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

It's perhaps a bit of a chicken-and-egg story, but I think the advent of gigantic farm subsidies (especially for corn and wheat) has facilitated the current portion size inflation. As for why manufacturers would want to push more on us, I think I offered a decently credible explanation with "the larger size catches our eye and fools us into thinking we're getting a better value." And true, nothing prevents us from cutting the gigantic muffins into smaller pieces, but the fact remains that normal-sized has now been downgraded to "mini."

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

Well, the larger size means that you really are getting a better value - better than you'd get if you bought an identical number of smaller muffins for the same price.

It seems like there are two different, though related, problems here. One is: Americans eat, and expect, too much food. The other is misleading advertising (tall, grande, venti coffee?). They're related because, if you're presented with a "mini" muffin, you might thing "Oh, it's ok to eat two of these at once - they're just little muffins, after all." But if you're at all in tune with your body and your food, you'll eat what you want and no more regardless of what it says on the label. (I don't know anyone who respects, or even reads, the "recommended serving size" suggestions on nutrition labels, most of which suggest much smaller servings than people generally eat.)

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

"Well, the larger size means that you really are getting a better value - better than you'd get if you bought an identical number of smaller muffins for the same price."

That depends entirely on what "value" means to you--portion size or calorie density is not the only (or even the best) way to gauge value, though it's certainly the easiest--it's much easier to gauge how much of something you're getting, vs. what was used to make the food, or the quality of the ingredients that went into the food, or how carefully it was handled, etc. The assumption that more = better is much more prone to being false, I think, when it comes to something like store-bought food, and it becomes doubly true in a country like America, which is relatively affluent and positively afloat in an ocean of calories; more = better would be more likely to hold true for situations in which one is in danger of running into a calorie shortage.

And what you say about being in tune with your body and the amount of food you need is certainly true and valid, but it also ignores the way people are conditioned; the vast majority of us, when presented with a tremendous amount of food, will over-eat, even if we're decently self-conscious about what a reasonable portion size is. I'm not exempting people from being conscious and trying to eat healthily and carefully; I just feel that food manufacturers make it much harder for us to do so, in ways big and small, using both obvious and insidious tactics.

[konomaigo.livejournal.com]

That's all very well and good, but I seem to recall making you 'normal' sized muffins recently. How many did you eat? At least as much as in a Costco muffin, methinks.

It seems to me that 'mini' in this case may just mean 'one'. ^_-

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

I ate a lot of those home-made muffins that time, it's true, but: 1) I don't generally eat that many in one sitting, because they tend to be treats, and more relevantly, 2) it doesn't change the point that calling them "mini" is obscene.

[konomaigo.livejournal.com]

I know, I'm just poking fun. I rather agree with you (though suddenly I'm in the mood for a muffin the size of my head.)

I'm glad you liked the muffins. I don't think they would have been effective against the zombie horde.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

The monster ones sold at the train station near me are over 800 calories apiece! They're monsters! Delicious, but HUGE!!!