Smaller meal portions for women

[mynamefor2025]

Currently watching good morning Britain and they are discussing If smaller portions should be offered to women to help with obesity rates as women need fewer calories.

Er is there no obese men on the planet? I feel like given a few years, we will all be micro chipped and have every thing controlled for us by the government including our portion sizes.

Not there to see the discussion, but I agree with the posted up thread who said if it costs the same as a male portion, then yeah nah, it’s none of their (who are these people?) business.

whilst being female I also physically work harder than my earlier life of being in an office. Who are these people to decide I need to eat a smaller portion because I’m a biological woman ?

why don’t they just target people who eat badly ?

Where I live the version thats happening is prices in cooked food eating out have gone up the protein element has severely shrunk and its bulked out with carbs a heap of rice or potatoes / chips because they are tweaking the profit margins which is why I don’t bother dining out. You get little buck for your money .
we have supersized Dining ware and clothing to match the industrialising of food looking at vintage sizes everything was smaller plates and people so it must be reverting to 50s sizes thimble shot glasses and main plates the size of sides .

Like in a restaurant? The average woman does need less calories than the average man, but it's still not a one size fits all. There are tall female ultramarathon runners who would probably need more calories than an average height lightly active female OR a short sedentary male. If you go to a restaurant, you should get the food you pay for. It's one thing to have two size options on a menu (some places do "appetizer"/main with different price points) but I'd be pretty annoyed if a smaller portion was just plonked down in front of me specifically because I'm a woman - especially since, if it were a government initiative, lots of restaurants would use that as an excuse to not actually charge less for a small "lady portion" because "oh we're just following govt guidelines!"

If someone is concerned about their weight (especially if, like me, they eat healthy food but still are overweight), portion control, Tdee calculators etc is a good thing to start with. If they're not, they're probably eating the rightish portions for their weight/height/sex/activity level anyway. Either way, not sure they need policing by anyone other than themselves. Maybe rather than suggesting we reducing offerings for women as a monolith, we need to get better at sending the message that we don't need to eat everything on our plates if it's too much - it's fine to leave some of it or pack up the leftovers for another meal. And letting people help themselves if you're eating at someone's house rather than plating up the same portions for everyone, that way people can judge their own appetite/needs and probably less food will get wasted?

No it’s not fine to leave food

Perhaps restaurants could offer various portion sizes and supply extra carbs for those extra hungry people rather than over serving which drives food waste which is pretty horrible

DH is a 70 year old vegetarian and I am a 52 year old fat carnivore. (Although actually I have now been veg for a couple of months).

There have been multiple times where he has ordered a salad and i have ordered steak and chips and the opposite plates have been automatically placed before each other.

Unconscious biases are real!

I often choose a Childs meal for this reason. Women are usually smaller than men so need less calories

Maybe you’re a large woman because of this attitude though? You think you can eat the same as a man and not get fat? Or is it that you mean you are tall but slim when you say large?

So would I. Childs portion sometimes is possible but not always

But also I don’t necessarily want a child’s meal which is usually chicken nuggets, pizza etc. I would like a smaller adult portion.

Yes, definitely. The children’s meal option is not always very good

Wow, that's outrageous, and well done to the girls for challenging it.

I think availability of smaller sizes would be good, but obviously the customer and not the restaurant should choose the size. Plus, they should charge less, but realistically many of the overheads would be the same, so how much cheaper would a small meal be?

And the ones who are humourless about “trans” people.

Transwomen are another good example of women that need man sized portions tbf.

Yes, why do people always want to regulate women? It is other women doing it too. Just respect other people's autonomy, please.

Nobody is trying to regulate anybody. All that has been suggested is that smaller portions are made available to anybody who wants one. Male or female.

If I’m eating out I tend to fast during the day so I can eat a meal with all the works.

Maybe they should offer plump women a smaller portion as its clear they're not an athlete/are consuming too many cals. Can you imagine the fallout? 🤣 It'd be like WW3.

Children need fewer calories than adults; women need fewer calories than men; smaller people need fewer calories than bigger people; older adults need fewer calories than younger adults… so the easiest way to accommodate all that is to offer larger and smaller portions of meals and let people make the choice that works for them. (Far too many people would still choose a larger portion when they don’t actually need that many calories, but you can’t police that, can you?)