Small Size Me

 Are Americans getting over their love affair with big restaurant portions? Apparently so. This is a new trend that's making the rounds ofmationwide chain restaurants and fast food joints. Diners don;t want platters of steaks or hamburgers the size of hubcaps. They're going for smaller for health and even ecological reasons.

Regular contributor Kim Severson wrote about this phenomenon in today's New York Times Wednesday Food section.For decades restaurants like Olive Garden and Chilis were serving huge platters or never ending bowls. Even fast food jointss like Burger King and KFC doled out huge portions to hungry diners. However it's all changing. There are many reasons after years of gorging that the country has said stop. People are realizing that it's unhealthy to eat meals that have a calorie count at a whopping two thousand calories .They want smaller b snack sized bites that will not increase their waist line. It's also impossible to finish a meal. There is also the very real threat of food waste which contributes to more waste being produced. According to a 2020 study  forty percent (!!!!) of all restaurant food does not get eaten.In an effort to stave off climate change states like California and Massachusetts have mandated how much food waste goes into landfills. Other states will more than likely follow so there might be a cap on serving oversized portions. Another factor is people taking GLP-1 or weight loss drugs.They are heading into what's known as snackification, people ordering appetizers or even kids meals because they know they can finish everything.

Customizing and basic downsizing of portions should be easy according to Dana Gunders CEO of Refed, the nation's leading organization in fighting food waste and one of the groups working on the Georgetown portion study.A group Portion Balance Coalition based in Georgetown's McDonough School of Business began a year long study to understand the problem.It hopes to sign on at least ten high volume chains like Panda Express and Chick Fil_A. Some chains have already embraced the principle Subway introduced a snack menu while Burger King shrank its ten piece nugget to eight pieces. Panera has the vastly popular You Pick Two - a cup of of soup with either half a sandwich or half a sandwich. This is one of the chain;s most popular orders Chip Wde who left Red Lobster North American operations to work for Union Square Hospitality Group predicts that this will be the wave of the futire. Some places sell their big portions as dinner today  lunch tomorrow to get two meals out of a larger one.

Will America as a whole embrace smaller portions. Quite possibly yes. People cannot eat large quantities of food. They will want smaller dishes that suit the,