The towering burger and ballooning bagel have withstood public health campaigns, but a new movement to shrink servings is finally gaining traction. Po

Restaurant Portions Are About to Get Smaller. Are Americans Ready?

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2024-09-25 11:30:05

The towering burger and ballooning bagel have withstood public health campaigns, but a new movement to shrink servings is finally gaining traction.

Portion sizes in American restaurants shot up in the 1980s and never came down. The average serving of spaghetti and meatballs doubled. Bagels ballooned into six-inch-wide monstrosities. Burritos started to weigh more than a Harry Potter hardcover.

Nutritionists and policymakers haven’t had much success fighting portion creep, which has been linked to health problems associated with obesity. Attempts to legislate soda sizes were shot down. Calorie counts on menus have largely gone ignored and might even be harmful. Even celebrity-dusted public health campaigns from the White House didn’t move the needle much.

But today, a combo plate of economics, demographics and climate science may accomplish what years of official hand-wringing could not: loosening the grip that super-size restaurant portions have on the national diet.