Recipe of the Week

Fun, Facts & Fitness from Mary Morris MSc.

How often have you ordered a pub lunch and been shocked at what arrives on your plate? Enough food to feed an army you might joke. I call it 'portion distortion'. As Rosemary expressed shock at the mammoth steak meal served to her 40 years ago, sadly it is now so entrenched in our pub culture that many would complain if the 'right' size for one person to eat was set before them!

When we go out to lunch my husband and I frequently now just choose what we would both like and then share a single portion, as we now know that what comes is enough for at least 2 people (if not 3!). Also, I have been out with groups of friends who now ask for a child’s portion or order two starters instead of a main meal! We are all people who take our health seriously and want to stay slim!

Nutrition labelling also needs a good old overhaul regarding what is ‘one serving’. On the front of food packaging we are told how many calories and how much sugar, fat and salt we will consume if we eat the recommended serving. But have you worked out how much of the product is one serving? Probably not... which is leading us to all over-consume unless we take note.  

The number of servings needs to be larger and bolder on all food and drink products to help us become more aware. Currently, recommended portion sizes on foods are inconsistent, often unrealistic, and can leave people confused about how much they should eat. An example of this is the good old pizza. In a restaurant you can be served a 343g pizza which is considered to be one portion. But if you buy the same pizza in a supermarket, it is 250g and labelled as 2 servings. This makes the restaurant size almost equivalent to 3 servings! A couple I know have recently returned from a visit to Chicago where they were told that the local speciality was the deep pan pizza and they must try one. They then ordered a small size to share. What arrived almost filled the table they were sitting on!

Some Surprising Facts from the May 2023 Which? report:

• Of 1265 Which? members surveyed, almost a quarter thought that a tube of Pringles was 4 portions of crisps when in fact it is 7 portions.
• More than half thought that a 225g packet of halloumi cheese contained between 2 and 4 servings. It actually contains 7.
• 79% thought that a sandwich meal deal was one serving. The sandwich is, but when you add the drink and the snack it becomes 3 servings in calorie consumption.
• Cadbury's Dairy Milk wildly varies in serving size printed on the label depending on which bar you buy.
• A recommended serving size of Quality Street is 2 sweets! Try doing that at Christmas!

The trend for bigger glasses also encourages us to drink more. Thirty years ago, a glass of wine in a pub was a standard 125ml (making one bottle serve 6 glasses). Now a standard glass is 175ml or as large as 250ml (making one bottle equal to only 3 servings!). This means that at home we are using larger glasses and over-pouring.  

If you enjoy a glass of orange juice at breakfast, be aware of what constitutes one portion. In a recent experiment, some served themselves 400ml of juice – 2.7 times more than the recommended amount. It is important for us to understand that 150ml of orange juice has around 62 calories and 13g of sugar and 400ml has 166 calories and 35g of sugar – that's more sugar than an adult should have in a day!

Part of the issue here is that with drinks, most people don't consider liquid calories in the same way as they do food calories. Why? Because they don't fill us up!

Larger plates are now standard too. In the 1950s a standard dinner plate was 25cm wide, whereas it is now 28cm. They can now even be so big that they no longer fit in a microwave or our kitchen cupboards! For decades we have advised those trying to lose weight to use a smaller plate so they don't feel they are being short-changed!

In 2020 the Which? Cereal Experiment took place where 122 people were asked to pour their usual bowl of cereal. On average they poured 63% more than the recommended portion.

Interestingly, the best result was with Weetabix. A recommended portion is 37.5g and that is what most people served - 2 biscuits!

All this over-consumption gets me to thinking about how it could possibly be burned off through exercise. It is a proven fact that most people over-estimate how much they burn through exercise and under-estimate how many calories they consume!

Current trends in eating and exercise make this problem even worse. In the present cost of living crisis, I have been surprised by how popular eating out in pubs and restaurants continues to be and how difficult it is to book a table. Clearly many are not cutting back on going out to eat!

To all of you who read this Newsletter every week I trust that you are 'flying the flag' for change by setting a wonderful example of eating sensible size portions and being active. 

Did you know... 

Which? is the brand name used by the Consumers' Association, a registered charity and limited company.

The organisation was set up in 1957 as a response to the changing values of the post-war era and a corresponding growth in sharp trading practices. Their first publication started as a small 32-page magazine that included reports on electric kettles, sunglasses, aspirin, cake-mixes, scouring powders, non-iron cottons and British cars.

By 1959, membership reached 150,000 and in 1962 they produced their first quarterly Which? car supplement, which became Motoring Which? in 1965, followed by Money Which? in 1968.

In 1970, Which? set up its own labs to test products including domestic appliances, DIY equipment and consumer electronics, work which had previously been contracted out. They started taking a greater campaigning role on issues such as lead poisoning and aircraft noise. In 1971, Which? published the first league table on the tar and nicotine content of cigarettes.

Which? continued campaigning on consumer safety issues, with its car safety test results strengthening calls to legislate car manufacturers to fit seat belts in all new cars, helping to make it compulsory to Clunk Click Every Trip in 1983.

Following the deregulation of the gas and electricity industry, in 2005 Which? launched one of the first online comparison sites called Switch with Which? to compare energy tariffs.

Which? proudly claims to be 100% independent - not influenced by third parties and not accepting freebies from product manufacturers or retailers. They have no owners or shareholders and are not part of a government department, being purely funded by the magazine and service subscriptions of the Consumers' Association members.