Dinner service - obesity

On Graham Norton lord sugar said the way he kept trim was using a small fork for the same reason you describe. My problem is crisps, fizzy drinks and bread to try to get me through the day so I don’t think either of your methods would work for me but if it works for you go for it!!

Feed them for how long though!

I was married in 1989. Our everyday tea/dinner set is Marks and Spencer Harvest, which was one of the most popular patterns in the eighties and nineties. I noticed years ago that the standard size of these plates is definitely smaller than modern plates. The salad plates are the size of today's side plates. I use the side plates for their intended purpose and the salad plates if I am having a smaller meal. When our children were primary school age, they would eat their dinners from the salad plates while we had the dinner plates, as my parents did when I was a child. It has not stopped me struggling with my weight for most of my adult life but has probably helped me not to reach the vast sizes that were fairly rare thirty or forty years ago but, sadly, all too common in people these days, especially far too many younger people. The only thing I find that properly keeps my weight down is intermittent fasting. It is not right for everyone but it suits my metabolism well.

Only a day, but my DH and DC are all strapping, 6'5" rugby players. I'm teeny tiny, of course, so I just need a shaving of lettuce.

I always eat off a side plate, like the sort you’d put bread on, unless it’s something awkward like a roast with gravy that needs more space. We do not need to eat a kilo of food every night. Surely, you plate up according to hunger though, not plate size? I wouldn’t just dish out huge portions on big plates for everyone. Let them plate themselves up otherwise you end up force feeding them.

i judged someone giving her dc a bag of crisps after school about to go swimming
i am sure she had her reasons
but to my mind you shouldnt go swimming after eating
her dd did turn out quite over weight last time i saw her sadly

Mm, maybe you do. In our house if it's too much for someone then I put it away as leftovers/let them take it home/compost it. I don't stand over them forcing it down their gasping mouths.

Why don't you just stop buying crisps, fizzy drinks etc?
No one is forcing you to put them in your trolley or grab them 'on the go'.

Not being holier than thou, but we don't eat or drink any of those. I can't recall when I last had a fizzy drink- maybe the 1970s.
Crisps are once a year at Xmas with the left over turkey buffet.

I’m just chiming in on the conversation about how we used to eat.
Something that has made me deeply unpopular over the years when I was younger and working in care homes was my repeated complaints to not just care home management but also our local social services department about the food.
So I worked with an agency which meant I’d have to work anywhere. If you went to a home that was self funded and very expensive the food was beautiful. Lots of homemade food with meals elderly people grew up eating, plated up restaurant standard, not dinner lady style.
The same aged people who lived in the poorer homes would be fed utter shit. We’re talking crap burgers you’d get from a burger van, shitty chips and beans. People who grew up during the war rationing did not want shit food. They didn’t want large quantities of fries, fish fingers or jars of curry with watery rice. They deserved the low UPF meals, plated beautifully and designed with their palette in consideration instead of the lowest budget slop. Does anyone ever remember their granny born in the 1920s saying “ooh, I’d murder a Big Mac” because I’ve certainly never met any body who didn’t grow up on them or have them during adulthood care for such food.
Do you know the difference I spotted in the elderly people? Now I appreciate lifestyle prior to being in the homes varied and poor people have always traditionally had poorer health conditions etc but the elderly people eating shite food, cheap cereal breakfast and toast vs porridge and fruit, with seeds and honey with toast? Those residents had more movement, slept less and were less miserable. Brains and bodies were more stimulated. I’m not simplifying the other environmental factors that came to play here but I can say with certainty that overfeeding ourselves crap makes for lethargic, sluggish and quite miserable people.
I became close to a chef working in one of the most expensive homes and asked him to help me do a generic menu I could email to the shitty homes and it was obviously costed much less, but similar meals. He gave me his recipes and pictures (he had a photo menu so his residents could see what to expect) and I emailed it to homes, social workers I knew, people in local government and nothing happened.
But old people had it right, it’s criminal that people who lived off stews, soups, essentially meat and two veg became victim of cheap upfs.
I say this as someone who has grown up in poverty and has the pallet of a chicken nugget connoisseur and trying desperately to not succumb to all my meals being a bit shit btw. I’m also a fat lassie. So I’m not judging anyone on a personal level. I love a good buttercream and jammy cake. Like an iced latte. But the way it costs less to feed children a frozen pizza and some fries (£2 Iceland) instead of a homemade shepherd’s pie or roasted chicken dinner, is evil.
Sorry for my tangent. I’m very passionate about what we eat and more importantly feed those without the ability to feed themselves such as elderly or disabled or children.

I have not seen this. If we buy an ice cream on holiday, we will buy a single cornet. Also, cup cakes are a relatively recent thing; l believe imported from America. Traditionally, we would have fairy cakes, which are much smaller and have a thin layer of icing on top rather than the vast swathes of butter cream that is put on cup cakes. Sometimes, a small part of the top of a cake would be cut out and some butter cream put in. The small bit of cake that had been cut out was then cut in half and put back on the butter cream to make butterfly cakes. For very small children's birthday parties, tiny fairy cakes the size of an iced gem biscuit (another childten's party treat) were very popular and loved by children as they like miniature things. They would often be sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.

The main plates I use these days are smaller than the ones I used 30 years ago.
I'm still fat.

So that doesn't prove your hypothesis.

There was something on the TV once about patterned plates too, apparently we fill our plates less if the plate is plain white. Bugger, all mine have patterns :-)

A day seems like rookie numbers and absolute gluttony.

Agree that switching to a smaller plate will not magically make an obese person shed the pounds. Bigger plates can encourage people to eat more. I was at a barbecue restaurant at a rodeo place in Texas a few years ago. My food was served on a tray (could have held holds 4 cups and saucers). It was crammed to the edges with enough food for 2-3 adults. I asked if it was a mistake. No ma’am, that’s our standard barbecue meal. All around me were morbidly obese people. It was eye-opener. If humongous portions on humongous plates are everywhere, people can start to believe they’re normal. That’s leaving aside the quality of the food!

Who are you to speak for all older slim women? Im in my 60s and have a BMI of about 23. I eat cake as a snack. I dont eat as much cake as I once did as I now have to be mindful of what I eat to maintain my slim figure but your generalisation irked me!

On the subject of plate sizes, yes, plates have got bigger. I have had the same dinner service for 35 years and when a plate or bowl breaks and I have to replace it, well, there is no choice about the bowls but with the plates, I buy a size down from the largest and they match my original dinner plates.

Pizzas are a classic example. A pizza used to feed 4 people , with salad - now it's one pizza per person.

Lots of things influence obesity including

1. Modern processed foods contain huge amounts of sugar. Everything I had as a child was cooked from scratch.
2. This meant cakes and biscuits were a rare treat because no-one has time to make them every day. Now they are cheap & everywhere.
3. We walked a lot. DM had no car so I walked a mile to school from five, and another mile home. Or ran most of it. Senior school was two miles each way.
4. Smaller plates, yes, but less food generally and higher prices. As a child, a roast chicken fed seven of us. We ate a lot of home grown veg.
5. Food was fresh & better balanced. Supper was meat or fish and two or three fresh veg. No sugar-rich barbecue sauces. Dessert was fruit & cream. I don't ever remenber eating pasta which is very dense.
6. We drank water. Never alcohol at home. If my parents went out, my dm would have one small sherry. Now people think nothing of drinking half a bottle of wine per night.
7. Chores were more strenuous. Hoovers were heavier, washing was in a twin tub and then hanging it on lines. Even if electric, everything was lower powered. Washing cars or windows involved a bucket & sponge. Carrying shopping home from the bus stop rather than having it delivered. We used far more calories just getting through the day.
8. Heating & insulation were less effective meaning we used more calories keeping warm.

I'm 63. I'm still a size 10 but never been on a diet. I've raised my ds on home cooked food, plenty of fresh fruit & veg, almost no processed stuff.

He's 6'2", 18yo but still has a 26" waist. The silly thing is we now struggler to find him clothes to fit because the high street designs for people who are fatter.

Yes, I find it frustrating when I'm planning a substantial main and all the starters are carby and fried. I want space for the main.

ANNotherWriter

I work in a supermarket and they’re easy to grab when you’re doing a ten/ eleven hour shift!! I’m not hugely overweight (just over ten stone) but just explaining to op why her theory won’t work for everyone, also when I’m leaving work and have to go collect the kids it’s easy to grab something you can stuff in your mouth while driving!!

Also, it’s just a discussion, no need to be angry!!

I'm not sure if our minds are truly "tricked". There is an old diet "tip" to serve your meal on a smaller plate if it looks too small.

My parents bought a dinner service in the 1970's. The main meal plates are not small but not as wide as some replacements I've chosen in the last 10 years.

I thought the width difference was about showing the design on the plate.
Maybe it's a conspiracy to push everyone to spend more on food 😉

i am still of the same mindset
my mid twenties dd is aghast at my serving!

I've never been so greedy that I need a huge plate. I know when I am full.

I blame nouvelle cuisine that took off in the eighties - huge plates with tiny portions artistically arranged. As a nation, we enthusiastically embraced the plates, but the tiny portions bit got lost in translation. I have several sets of china, but one we had as a child had 9” plates for the children and my mother, and a ten and a half inch plate for my father. A nine inch plate would be termed a lunch or salad plate these days.

Not everyone has the same biology @angelos02 . I used to take snacks for one of my kids who would be deranged with hunger and have a hangry meltdown on the way home. High metabolisms and borderline over active thyroids run in our family. That kid is now a thin adult getting through at least 3000 calories a day without gaining any weight.

Until recently I was eating chocolate eclairs as an after lunch dessert and eating share bags of crisps as a snack.

Not sure the size plate I put them on would have helped me.