How to tackle obesity? Go back to 1950s plate sizes
FAMILIES should return to the smaller portion and plate sizes of the 1950s to beat obesity, a report on modern diets urges.
Meals have ballooned in the last few decades - with people filling their plates to the brim and cleaning them of every last morsel.
British retailers are also selling food in bigger and bigger packages, with the average supermarket pizza increasing from 200g to more than 250g in the last two decades alone, a groundbreaking new report has found.
Leading health scientists at Cambridge and Oxford universities warned last night that this trend needs to be urgently reversed in order to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis.
They advise that people should eat off smaller plates to help moderate their diets.
The authors of the study said that although ‘anecdotal’ evidence suggests tableware was smaller in the past, there is no historical data to detail how much plates and bowls have grown over time.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, they cited figures which show how everyday supermarket products have grown in size over the last 20 years.
They showed how pies, muffins, bagels, pizzas and packets of crisps are all sold in larger packets than they were in the 1990s.
But the experts, led by Professor Theresa Marteau of Cambridge University, warned that people need to go back even further – to the 1950s, when some food was still rationed – to really see their health improve.
‘Reducing portion sizes across the whole diet to realise large reductions in consumption may mean reverting to sizes of portions and tableware similar to those in the 1950s,’ they wrote.
Little data exists for average diets and portion sizes in postwar Britain, but the experts predict that consumption of energy- dense foods – such as chips, burgers and cake – has more than doubled since then. The British Medical Journal study, published yesterday summarises the most conclusive evidence to date on portion sizes, packaging, and tableware.
The authors calculated that simply reducing the size of your plate or bowl reduces food intake by 159 calories a day – a 10 per cent change for a British adult.
If the same approach is applied to all food and drink consumption – including smaller food packaging and restaurant portions – overall calorie intake could be reduced by up to 16 per cent, they said.
The team, who analysed 61 studies involving 6,711 participants, also called for retailers to stop discounting food sold in larger quantities.
The research came as Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, warned that childhood obesity was a real ‘threat’ to the country’s long-term health.
Addressing the Chief Nursing Officer for England’s annual conference, Mr Stevens said: ‘We can help change the tide of opinion in this country. We have to take a more assertive stance particularly on junk food, advertising and marketing of food aimed at children and sugar.’
‘Change tide of opinion’