Dieting on a Budget

Size matters.

There is a difference between portions and servings. A portion refers to the amount of food you eat at a given time. i.e. a plate of pasta or a bowl of ice cream. On the other hand, a serving is a specific amount of food with a defined nutrient range. Servings are usually expressed in terms of cups, teaspoons, or grams.

A portion of food on your plate can contain several servings. In her book, Go Green Get Lean, Kate Geagan, compared pasta servings in Italy to those in North America. In Italy, diners get about 2 cups of pasta in total (roughly 4 servings) while North Americans will have 5 to 8 cups of pasta (10 to 16 servings) at one time.

We need to retrain our eyes as to how much food is appropriate--we seem to have lost this skill.

Consider the following guidelines:

• A medium piece of fruit is the size of a woman's fist.

• Three ounces of meat, poultry or fish are the size of a deck of cards.

• Half a cup of pasta is the size of a computer mouse

• One ounce of cheese is the size of four dice.

• One tablespoon of peanut butter is the size of a postage stamp.