When it comes to our cultural obsession with quantity equaling value, I have a personal story that has helped me to see our portion size problem from a slightly different perspective.

My sister’s close call

My youngest sister was a server and bartender for years at a successful restaurant. She loved the place, but eventually decided that she wanted to get a job at Claim Jumper, a rapidly growing restaurant chain. Claim Jumper paid a little better since the bills for customers were typically a little more, primarily due to their famously oversized portions of American comfort food.

Shortly after she made the job change, disaster struck. Driving home by herself after a concert in Eastern Washington (which is primarily farm country), in the darkness she drifted at high speed into a steep drainage ditch and then bounced through a fence, into a field. She rolled her car end for end 4 times, traveling a couple of hundred feet into the field. Although she had a case of beer in her trunk (she was in the middle of camping for a week with friends), she hadn’t been drinking - she simply fell asleep. When the police arrived, they assumed the worst, considering that the entire crash site smelled like alcohol.

The photo to the right shows what her car looked like after it was retrieved from the field.

Incredibly, she walked away from the accident with no broken bones or major medical damage - just a few minor injuries, cuts, and some bruises mostly from the seatbelt that saved her life. If there’s one thing that has improved that I am eternally thankful for, it’s auto safety engineering.

Upon returning to her job, she called me a few weeks later to say that she was back working at her previous job - she had quit Claim Jumper, where she had indeed been making more money.

“Why did you quit? Wasn’t it going pretty well?”

“Well, the problem is with some of my injuries, I can’t lift the plates anymore…They’re just too heavy. The ones at my old work are fine though.”

In other words, the portions were so huge for an average order that with her injuries she couldn’t physically lift the plates and carry them to customers (much less the giant trays that servers usually carry). The first place at which she worked offered “average” sized portions (still large, but not Claim Jumper-sized), and she could do that without too much trouble.

Portion size is determined by…Us

In the years following the accident, we went to Claim Jumper numerous times, and I couldn’t help but think about my sister’s experience. I too was going for two reasons, just like most of their customers. The food tasted good, and you got a LOT of it.

As I’ve mentioned in other articles here, I do not find fault with restaurants like Claim Jumper for offering large portions. If there was no demand for it, they would have no need to give away extra food at that price. No, portion size is a cultural issue.

The good news is, its something that is within our individual control to change. It doesn’t require legislation, boycotts, angry letters, or lawsuits. Portion control requires personal responsibility, and a purposeful re-education of what a real portion size should be. It requires an understanding that too much of anything is damaging to us physically, and I would argue, emotionally.

This week I’ll be posting an article with a few rules of thumb on portion size, including a handful of tips that you can take with you without the need for an iPhone or a digital scale. I’m not planning on revolutionizing the way we measure things - I’m just going to compile a list of techniques that I’ve found useful in re-tuning what I expect out of a portion size.

One more thing, about my sister

One thing I didn’t mention about my sister’s story: When she rolled the car, she actually pulled herself out of the destroyed vehicle. She climbed through the driver’s side window and wandered to the side of the road where she sat until she could flag someone down.

In other words, helping herself was the key to surviving a potentially deadly situation. You get the idea.

Part 2 discusses what I’m doing now, every day, to determine the amount of food I’m eating - and so far I’ve lost 23 lbs doing it. Here’s the link: Retrain Yourself on Food Portion Sizes - Part 2.

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Related posts:

1. Retrain Yourself on Food Portion Sizes - Part 2
2. New article on portion control is coming tomorrow - my wife and kids are back home!
3. 20 tactics to kill the fast food habit
4. Stop eating fast food in three steps
5. 7 things you should be paying for when dining out