'Portion police,' be gone: let diners decide how much food is too much

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 8, 1996 by Rick Van Warner

Restaurants, long easy targets for media drive-by snipers, again are coming under attack. This time the focus is not on food safety, nutritional claims or labor issues but on portion size.

On Charles Osgood's nationally syndicated radio show, a recent lead-in stated, "America's portions are out of control, and it's killing us."

The segment was anchored by comments from former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who, like others before him, placed the blame squarely on restaurants.

"They're [Americans] eating too much, because their portions are too much, and that lead has been taken by the restaurants."

He used, as a somewhat lame example, the portion size of a steak in Paris vs. a steak in the United States.

"This is not the golden age of plenty; it's an age of too much, too soon. Eating too much and dying too soon," he said.

Not long before Osgood's show, a similar discussion blaming restaurant portions for America's weight problem took place between anchor Joan Lunden and a reporter on ABC's "Good Morning, America."

It is yet one more case in which shallow consumer media reports are making restaurants scapegoats.

With the size and scope of the restaurant industry and the absolute spectrum of establishment types and quality levels, there's no question that restaurants are easy prey for sensationalist shows or publications. After all, with the millions of employees and restaurant locations in this country, disgruntled employees who don't wash their hands or restaurants with unsanitary conditions still can be found if one looks hard enough. ,

But too often such people or places are sought out after the fact, used as pawns of proof to justify predisposed story angles that producers know will shock audiences. And sad to say, the entire restaurant arena is indicted based on the problems found with a few players.

Fingering restaurant portion sizes is just another simplistic and misguided conclusion to the complex problem of an overweight America.

Take working in this business, for instance. Certainly some of us who are overweight eat out more than the average American and, depending upon the establishments we frequent or work in, regularly consume more fat or calories than does the average Joe.

But excluding metabolic or economic factors, the main reason any of us is overweight has little to do with restaurant portion size and everything to do with portion consumption, exercise and what we eat. It has to do with portion control, balance and self-discipline.

Blaming restaurants for giving customers what they are asking for is ridiculous.

For it is the restaurant patron who decides whether or not she wants to buy the regular-size or the super-size sandwich or sides. It is the customer's choice whether or not he wants the 40-ounce monster cut or the petite cut at a steak house. It is the customer who decides whether she wants butter on her roll, sugar in her coffee, and broiled fish or veal Parmesan on her plate.

Restaurants should not be faulted for doing a good job in providing customers options for what they ask for and pay for. To place such blame ignores the very root of the issue, for good nutrition, sensible eating and healthy exercise all start at home. And it's up to parents to develop good eating habits among their children, just as it's up to individuals to strike good balance for themselves.

Dining decisions reside with the individual, from where to eat to what to eat to how much to eat. To suggest that restaurants should help society by not offering large portions is like suggesting that supermarkets should stop selling cookies.

And like everything else, it boils down to providing customers with choices. From quick-serve to fine dining, most operators understand that message.

It's been years now since many fast feeders added items like salads to their menus, with more healthful dishes now standard options on family and other sit-down restaurant menus. But the fact remains that the same person who orders the entree salad often splurges with a decadent dessert, and except in the upper echelons of fine dining, "healthier" items are usually not big sellers.

Obviously having at least some healthful menu options is becoming more important all the time.

But as always, customer demands ultimately will dictate where menus go, and when people demand smaller-portion sizes, smaller-portion sizes they'll get.

In the meantime, watch out for the self-appointed portion police.