The Importance of Portion Control

In the UK the average food purchased for a family of four equates to 8.3 million tonnes a year. However the amount of food wasted by a family of four in the UK amounts to eight million tonnes a year. Overall in total three million tonnes a year, is wasted on food alone. This is equivalent to £680 a year, or £50 a week. One reason for this problem is that families are cooking more than is required for sustainability. Also the foods served are on larger plates, compared to being served on smaller plates. This can add an extra 50 to 150 calories a day, then four pounds of weight a month, then 36 pounds a year (this is equivalent to adding three stone a year!!)According to the Industry and Grocery Distribution (IGD) the recommended intake of calories for a male is 2,500 calories, for a woman this value is 2,00 calories. A large size of pepperoni pizza with cheese on a thick crust typically contains over 3,000 calories. Donner kebab with chips usually contains 2900 calories. If these foods are consumed, the person would have little calories left to consume the other foods needed for the rest of the day. Also extra calories can be consumed due to eating previously throughout that day. This can lead to weight gain, and over a long period of time possibly become overweight, unless changes are not made.
There is a variety of ways to reduce the use of consuming extra calories. One example is the knowledge of measuring the right portions per person, per food. Love Food Hate Waste (LFHW) is a special company funded by the Government to advise on the importance of reusing foods that are edible, and to promote the reduction of landfill. LFHW suggests:
three heaped teaspoons of beans per person
¼ mug full of rice per person
100g of pasta per person
75g spaghetti per person
140g of beef/chicken/pork per person
five small potatoes person
The LFHW also promotes the use of home composting, as there are foods that are unavoidable to waste including egg shells, banana skins, tea bags, amongst others.
Home composting is good as it can help to reduce waste going to landfill, and it can help to boost nutrients to the garden.
There are other ways to reduce food waste have a look at the other ideas:
Purchase spaghetti measures. These can be available in any supermarket stores. It is shaped like a wooden spoon, with circles (of different sizes) going vertically down the spoon. The circles demonstrate the bigger the number of people, the bigger the amount of food needed to cook them, the bigger the circle. The smaller the circle the less people needed.
Planning the meals for the week would help to reduce food waste, and can help to reduce the chances of buying food unnecessarily including saving money. Taking cash to go shopping, rather than using a debit/credit card can help to reduce spending, as there is only a limited budget when using cash.
Finally if extra portions are produced during cooking, and it is not needed, freezing would be an ideal idea, therefore food not needed can be reused later on. Any food can be frozen apart from:
Sour cream
Fresh eggs
Soups that are cream based
Mayonnaise
Real/ whipped cream
Cabbage
Biscuits
Pizza dough
If the following foods are left over:
Banana
Yogurt
Rice
The following meals can be made out of them:
Banana- smoothies, banana cake
Yogurt- Various desserts
Rice- Fried Rice/ rice pudding
Overall it is important to be weary about portions; simply swapping a 12 inch plate to a nine inch can reduce the calorie intake by 500 calories. This is ideal especially if healthy lifestyle and losing weight is on the agenda. But also it can help to save money, even better save the environment.
Francesca is a registered associate nutritionist. She can advice on healthy eating, portion control, weight loss, and other healthy lifestyle issues. She has created the programme called livelongrocks, which advises groups and individuals on weight management. The programme has a blog, and a website, which you can follow below:
http://www.livelongrocks.blogspot.com/
http://www.livelongrocks.co.uk/
if you have any other issues please email francesca on: francesca@livelongrocks.co.uk

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