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If you’re a regular on Ignite, then you may recognize the book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. It was an Oprah’s Book Club favorite and also reviewed in the Ignite book club. In the book, Wansink discusses the psychological reasons why we eat, the influences that go into to our food choices and why, many times, we overeat. Read More.
Well, Dr. Brian Wansink and a colleague, Collin Payne, recently came out with an interesting finding, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study reviewed the serving sizes and calorie content for classic recipes over a span 70 years. The study reviewed 18 recipes published in all seven editions of the classic cookbook, The Joy of Cooking. The study found some interesting results. It found that there was a 40 percent increase in calories per serving for nearly all of the recipes. For example, the chicken gumbo recipe made 14 servings at 228 calories in the 1936 edition but made 10 servings at 576 calories in the 2006 edition.1 Read More.
The study’s findings were attributed to a couple of different factors. First, standard serving sizes have increased over the past 70 years. Our concept of portion size has grown so we’re accustomed to eating larger amounts quantities of food. Also, some of the more recent dishes in the study added or substituted ingredients. For example, the recipes included more sugar or butter or replaced ingredients with high-caloric alternatives (i.e. meat instead of vegetables).
Some critics say that this study holds little weight because it focuses on a small # of recipes that cannot be applied to the larger population. But what do you think? Do you Wansink and Payne's findings highlight trends in food consumption?
Justin
1 Wansink, Brian & Payne, Collin. The Joy of Cooking Too Much: 70 Years of Calorie Increases in Classic Recipes, Ann Intern Med, Feb 2009; 150: 291 - 292.
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