Eating Like 1950′s

So, I started using more of my vintage recipes and eating comfort food.  And I gained weight.  How can that be?  Well, easy.  I was eating a lot of it, so I discovered.  I had heard rumors that the portion sizes in cookbooks were growing (along with our waistlines) but Weenie_Elise pointed me to a recently published study about portion distortion in Tuesday’s Ode to Mrs Beeton.

The study, which looked at how classic recipes have changed during the past 70 years, found a nearly 40 percent increase in calories per serving for nearly every recipe reviewed, about an extra 77 calories.

The study identified the trend in numerous cookbooks, but it focused on American kitchen icon “Joy of Cooking,” first published during the ’30s and regularly updated with new editions since then, most recently in 2006.

…Lisa Young, an adjunct nutrition professor at New York University, had similar findings in a 2002 study that compared the book’s brownie recipe from the ’60s and ’70s editions to the recipe from the 1997 edition.

“Same recipe. Same pan. But in the ’60s and ’70s it yielded 30 brownies,” she says. “In the 1997 edition it yielded 15.”

I have two Joy of Cooking cookbooks.  One was published in 1964 and the other in 1975, so I checked the brownie recipe and, indeed, the portion size is for 30 brownies.  Apparently there wasn’t a big leap between the two publication years.  According to the study,

…changes in “Joy of Cooking” have been going on for a while. Increases in overall calories per recipe have been gradual, but portion sizes tended to jump, first during the ’40s, again during the ’60s, and with the largest jump in the 2006 edition.

Since starting Weight Watchers in December, I’ve been thinking a lot about portion size.  If I portion out the servings exactly as a recipe tells me to do, the portion sizes are often gigantic and I leave the table feeling stuffed.  That isn’t exactly what the goal of counting and measuring my portions and learning to listen to my body.

If you think about it, this study shows that portion sizes really are rather arbitrary, aren’t they?  A serving size for me–someone who sits at a desk most of the day writing and coaching–should NOT be the same serving size for my husband who is often wrestling with cast bronze and breaking molds apart when he his casting his sculptures.

I told My Honey about the study and we decided that we are just going to double the number of portions a recipe says it serves.  If we are still hungry after we eat one serving, we’ll have another helping.  But, I know from experience from my “naturally thin” days that we really don’t need to eat a lot of food in order to feel satisfied.

And I think it is because the serving sizes were so much smaller, they were able to get away with eating those cakes and sweets (I’ve noticed that my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the semi-sweet morsels bag says to drop dough by TABLESPOON.  I could have sworn that the recipe used to say to drop the dough by TEASPOON.  Why do I believe this?  Because I always thought the cookies looked awfully small compared to the ones I would by at Mrs. Fields.  But, I can’t find any proof online so maybe I was imagining it.

Another change I’ve made to my meal planning is that I’ve thrown out the food pyramid and brought back the Four/Five Food Groups.  Basically, I try to have a protein (meat), vegetable, fruit, dairy, and starch (bread/grain/starchy vegetable) at every meal.  It has made quite a difference, I say!

Here is an Encyclopaedia Britannica Film from 1954 on healthy eating.  Just like Ralph, if we eat from the five food groups, we’ll have a zest for life!  Click here for Eat for Health video if it doesn’t show up below.

Eat for Health (1954)