Portion Distortion

Portion sizes have increased across multiple venues, including restaurants, grocery stores and vending machines. Because these changes in portion size can translate into excess calories, it's important to make your patients or clients aware of the issue. The Portion Distortion Quiz from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) (http://hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/portion/) is a good tool to illustrate how portion sizes of some common foods have changed over the years.

Food labels can also help people understand that portion sizes are often larger than they think.  The following Web sites are good tools to help people learn to use the Nutrition Facts Label on food packages:

How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.   Test Your Food Label Knowledge (quiz), Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/flquiz1.html

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