Serving Size - What? How?

Image Courtesy: http://www.livewellspringfield.org/

A nightmare of a question for all health conscious diet watchers, isn’t it? Whether to stop at that one chapathi or add another half to the meal? When they say 2 idlis do they mean the small ones made at home or those large ones served in hotels? Well, everything that is cooked in different households and hotels varies in size, taste, servings and your likings. To simplify this confusion of how much to eat or rather how much u can serve at one time, the concept of serving sizes is developed. Serving sizes are a standard measure which will give you certain amount of energy and other nutrients depending on your diet. Now, there is something known as Portion sizes, these are your alteration of the serving sizes, you may eat more or less than the actual serving size, that’s your Portion Size. Let’s discuss a little more about it so that it’s understood better.

Let us first understand the serving sizes of different foods and then we will make it easier for us to identify the serving each time we eat.

The Nutrition Label on packed food makes it easier for you to determine your serving sizes. Hence, read the label carefully. Apart from the readymade help with the serving sizes on a food packet, another easy way to know your serving sizes are by visual comparisons with certain objects. 

Also your serving sizes are in your hands. Yes. All the types of food can be measured according to the size of your hand, fist, palm and thumb. The picture below shows how.

Image Courtesy: https://www.fitmapped.com

A serving of vegetables is two cupped hand full, a serving of cereal is a fistful, a serving of fruit should be the size of a fist, a serving of oil should be the tip of thumb and a serving of meat should be the size of the palm.

As far as possible you should stick to serving sizes so as to maintain a healthy diet and not dread the day on the weighing scales.

Keep checking the Nuti-knowhow column to know what are Portion Sizes. 

Post by Faiz Lahori