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First it was in the fast food industry. You couldn't buy anything without your friendly server offering to get you a bigger version of it. The good thing was that you also had to pay more for it. Now it seems to be everywhere. Woe betide the eatery, plain or fancy, that hasn't adjusted the amount of food they deliver as a "portion" upward.

Coming in the September issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, will be an article about a study from Rutgers that compares what 177 young adults perceived as normal portions of breakfast, lunch, and dinner items with what a similar group allotted for similar items 20 years ago. The young people were invited to have a free meal at which they were to choose typical portions of eight food and beverage items at breakfast or six items at lunch or dinner. It turned out that the perceptions of typical portion size were drastically increased for items that were served from and consumed from a cup or a bowl. As an example, study authors Jaime Schwartz, M.S., R.D. and Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, Ph.D., R.D., specifically mentioned that the subjects' ideas of typical portions of orange juice were 40 plus percent larger than 20 years ago. They also mentioned that this amount of juice would provide 50 additional calories and, if one drank that amount every day, it would add up to enough calories to add on five pounds over the course of a year. In all, more than half of the portions selected for breakfast were at least 25 percent higher than chosen by the young people of twenty years ago. For lunch and dinner items, about 70 percent of the portion sizes chosen by today's young adults were at least 25 percent higher than those of twenty years ago.