Misleading Serving Sizes?

Ok, the wife and I went to Outback Steakhouse tonight. I didn't plan on desert during our meal so I didn't look up any information on them . Needless to say I was shocked when the topic came up and my wife informed me that each desert was supposed to serve 4. Yes, that single slice of Carrot Cake (448 calories) or Cheesecake Plain no Sauce (737 calories) are 4 servings each. That Chocolate Thunder from Down Under (1910 calories), which is a Brownie with a scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream and some chocolate sauce is 4 servings... Without being told, who would think that 1 slice of anything would be 4 servings? To me this is plain dishonest. They are intentionally misleading people through their presentation style.

I see these types of things a lot but tend to just shake my head and go about my day. However, that Chocolate Thunder from Down Under drove home how easy it is to overindulge BIG TIME! 1 Desert 1910 calories... even split 4 ways, like you're supposed to intuit that; it's a killer.

What are some of the obviously misleading serving sizes/ products / containers you guys have seen?

Sausage links- 1/3 of a link is a serving. Who eats a third of a sausage?

Blue Bunny Personals, 2 servings per container. I was so mad when I read that, why go and name the product PERSONALS, and then make the container big enough for 2 servings.

I once at a candy bar.. It was one whole bar.. not a 4 in a pack kind of thing like a king size twix.. and it said it was 4 servings. In one whole bar.. WTH are you supposed to take a bite and pass it to your 3 closest friends? Or are you supposed to bring a fork and knife with you and some plates. It was a king size bar.. but I just feel they should say this candy bar has 1000 calories per package. Not this candy bar is 250 calories then is small letters if you cut it up in to 4 pieces and only eat one of said pieces.

WEAK!! What a load of advertising crap. Thanks for pointing that out for us. Best to make your own with your own fruit I guess.

Wow. That is really very misleading. I would have assumed that it was at most two servings.

Seeing how many servings per dish in restaurant foods is what actually motivates me to prepare most of my meals at home.

Those Nissin microwaveable chowmein noodles. My Fiance loves those. But one serving size is HALF the container and is about 300 calories or so. Okay, so do I split that up with someone? Do I put it in the fridge after I eat half and eat the leftovers tomorrow? (Eww).

When I go to eat out, I check to see what the serving size of a dish is online beforehand. :3 That usually works for most places. If it's something I REALLY like that has a lot of calories, I usually save the other half for later. (Like some of the dishes at Olive Garden, HUGE portions, but I really only ever eat half, and I'm stuffed for the rest of the day)

Most packaged/restaurant foods are pretty ridiculous, but Americans have completely distorted ideas about what constitutes a reasonable portion size. I'm often appalled by the amount of food that shows up on my plate. High-end and independent restaurants are better than national chains.

I remember winding up in Denny's a few years ago and ordering a french toast slam, or something like that. This ginormous plate of food appeared in front of me, and my first thought was, "Most of the people in this restaurant probably think this is a normal amount of food to eat for breakfast. No wonder Americans are getting so fat." I looked it up later, and the breakfast was something like 1200 calories before adding syrup or butter. Ick!

I work in a family-owned breakfast restaurant. Nutrition facts aren't available, and many people aren't aware of the massive calories they're consuming when they come in.
All of our eggs are double yolked -- order one egg, you get two, order two, you get four. The eggs come with a side of hash browns, grits, American fries, or sliced tomatoes (and not many people choose that one) and choice of pancakes, toast, french toast, or english muffin. You can also get them with a side of meat -- if you have bacon, it's four slices.
Our omelets are made with FIVE eggs and STUFFED with all kinds of yummy things. They look like little footballs, and they also come with the two sides.
We have a "lighter" section for those dieting; it includes fruit dishes and oatmeal, but you're given so much oatmeal and so much fruit that you could easily be eating 1000 calories there, as well.

And people don't realize how bad that is. They see those huge portions and think, "Wow, what a great deal on breakfast!" because the prices are the same as most other breakfast places but the food is 2 to three times the portion.

It's good food, but you have to take half to two-thirds of it home if you care about calories, but then who wants to reheat pancakes and eggs? Ew.

Not eating out is definitely the hardest thing for me--I LOVE restaurants. But I've noticed that I definitely cook healthier. Yesterday, I went to a party at a hotel restaurant and everything tasted wonderful, but everything tasted like butter. I added about 2 Tbsp of butter to my lunch calendar to try to demonstrate the calories (in addition to mashed potatoes made with whole milk and butter and fried chicken). The scary thing (and maybe this is because I'm still a calorie counting novice) is that this butter lunch was actually fewer calories than when I went out to dinner a few nights ago at a Mexican restaurant and ordered a salad. Granted, I did have tortilla chips, but I actually counted them for a change (and a margarita). I think it was because the portions at the lunch were actually fairly reasonable.

Having worked in the restaurant business (as a waitress) for years... the portion sizes are what people want. I used to serve a Belgian waffle (which is actually 4 servings of most pancake mixes, btw) with ice cream... not 3 little scoops, which would be 3 servings...but 5 very large scoops...a pile of whipped cream, strawberries IN SYRUP (3 or 4 ladles full) and chocolate sauce. IF I made them with less of any given ingredient, people complained. My regulars told me I made the best waffle sundaes in town. (And regularily ordered them with a side of 4 sausage links...cause who wants 3 measly slices of bacon compared to 4 large links...and 2 fried eggs.) Restaurants serve what people want and will pay for (mind you, i'm not speaking a person... it's been said, a person can be smart, but people are dumb...) - because it does not cost much more to make a bigger waffle or an extra egg, but the prices can skyrocket.

AS A CONSUMER, on the other hand... i get furious about it. Buy a "individual" freezer pizza (not that i eat them, if i want pizza i go all out and just do it) - many of them are 2-4 OR MORE, servings. So, 1/4 of that little pizza is what actually contains 300+ calories, NOT the whole thing. so its NOT individual.

My favorite pet peeve is "IHOP". While their nutritional information CAN BE FOUND, their offical stand on publishing it is "We offer a large and varied menu and believe that all consumers will be able to choose something that meets their nutritonal goals" or some b.s. like that. Meaning "haha, we're not telling you how many calories are in our pancakes..."! And not all pancakes are equal you know - whole grain, high fiber, low calorie cooked without oil is a lot different than processed enriched white flour with sugar and eggs cooked in butter. Hell, just cooking in butter verse spray is a big difference, as we all learn at some point. =). (Again, NOT anti-butter..i have a thing of "amish hand-rolled butter" from the farmer's market in the fridge. I am a firm believer that fats are necessary. I just want to know HOW MUCH is being used.)

At the end of the day, I've found cooking for myself at least 6 out of every 7 dinners, and pretty much all the other meals, has worked best. I control the food, I am learning to explore...and I burn about 4-6 calories a minute while cooking and cleaning up...the same as I burn during yoga. =).

When you are going to eat out, try to research in advance, or do what I do. Pick a restaurant that IS on fat secret, use the "restroom" to look up food on your phone (assuming you have an android or iphone...) or ask for a copy of the nutritional information - chains are SUPPOSED to have them on hand at all time - then automatically get a togo box and put at least half of it in there. And, if you're anything like me..forget said box before the end of the meal, and save yourself eating the leftovers at midnight too. =)

Oh..and...don't get tricked. At most restaurants, the entree with the highest amount of calories is the chicken Caesar salad with the dressing, croutons, bacon bits, cheese, and chicken. =)

@confusedangel I don't care if every item on the menu has 200,000 calories as long as it is accurately represented. Plating something on a saucer as a single brownie with a single scoop of ice cream on top makes it appear as a single serving, not 4 servings. Having a single, fairly small looking slice of cheesecake on a saucer makes it appear as a single serving, not 4 servings. They are intentionally misleading people by the way they represent these items. To present them as what appears to be a single serving and then expect the consumer to magically know it's 4 servings since it sure it's listed on the menu. This is dishonest to me.

As for as this being what people want. To some extent yes. However, it is the industry itself that has pushed this expectation of giant portions, year after year, commercial after commercial, so they are not innocent either. Personally, I would rather have them list normal portions and offer the option to either make it larger or smaller. That would be an honest way of doing business. Like one of the earlier posters pointed out about sausage, 1/3 of a single link is a serving, virtually guaranteeing anyone eating that product will consume a minimum of 3 servings. All so the manufacturer can slap a smaller calorie count on the label than what an honest representation of a serving size for that product is because they don't want you to realize how high in calories their product actually is. :/

I started this thread not because of Americas portion distortion problem but because of the dishonesty I see from food suppliers. Let's face it, Americans have no concept of what a portion or serving size really is any longer.

Very few of the restaurants that I eat at have nutrition information available, so I've not gotten into the habit of relying on what the restaurant says.

Rather, I'm educating myself about what a portion looks like and what the calorie counts are for various foods. For example, a serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards. If a steak or a piece of fish shows up and it looks like three decks of cards to me, then I assume that it has three times the calories that I would expect in a single serving. I can eat a smaller portion of it, or eat more and count about the right number of calories.

Half a cup of something is about the size of a tennis ball-- this metric is particularly useful for rice or pasta, but it would also be very useful for ice cream. An ounce of cheese is around the size of my thumb.

These estimates will never give you perfect calorie counts, but that's OK. The difference between eating a 240-calorie scoop of ice cream and a 260-calorie scoop is pretty irrelevant compared to being served three scoops of ice cream and being told that it's one serving.

At restaurants, I always ask for a box at the beginning of the meal (unless its really fancy or formal) and I put the amount I am not going to eat in the box for leftovers. Since I started counting calories, I have realized there is very little one can eat from a restaurant in it's entirety. Half is usually much more reasonable than a full plate. And you can save money too because the meal lasts for 2 or even 3 meals.

It's not just restaurants I'm talking about, that was just the example I used because it came up AT a restaurant. Food manufacturers in general do this... portion deception. While knowing portion sizes is helpful, it does nothing for non-standard or combination items unless you know the size and value of every ingredient. The sausage link and "personal pizzas" were both great examples of this. I think I was mostly wanting to vent and raise awareness that our food providers will often intentionally try to mislead us and the result could be our unintentional consumption of drastically more calories than we had intended or would have allowed ourselves if we hadn't been misled. Not many people would choose a desert that had 2,000 calories in it after they had just consumed a meal even if they weren't especially worried about their weight!

It takes more than common sense or reading the calorie content these days. It take diligence on our part to ensure we look hard enough at products to ensure we're not being misled. Like when I picked up an 8oz cup of Del Monte Fruit Smoothie at the grocery store 110 calories. I thought to myself 8oz serving 110 calories not too bad... yeah, the 8oz cup was TWO servings. I have to believe that they knew when they put it in an 8oz cup, shaped like a small drinking cup, which is a pretty standard serving size for DRINKING CUPS, that people would assume, at first glance, that the 110 calories was the entire cup. I dislike liars and this just seems like lying to me.

They take advantage of a consumer base that is known to be lazy.
In NYC there are different rules ie, trans fat has been forced out of food and all chain restaurants must post nutritional information for all menu items.
For everything else I use the IPhone web browser to check out how a potential meal will dent my daily calories. Its up to the individual to read the labels. Another example is Vitamin water, only 80 calories a serving. Most people don't realize there are 2.5 servings in that bottle, same with a 16 oz coke.

Oh, I agree it is up to the consumer to read the labels but it also up to the consumer to demand dishonest companies change their practices as well. Our consumer spending dictates their practices. If they get backlash for poor practices and rewarded with purchases for good practices they will change their behavior. That however, requires consumers to know what's going on and actually participate in their own lives. The only thing I loathe more than these dishonest practices is for "the Government" to pass laws "for my own good".

Soda is a good example, although they have changed their labels now, because of consumer demand?

I remember 12 oz cans stating that a serving was 8 oz, but they had columns for the 8 oz and a column for the 12 0z. Eventually it went to the 12 oz information (1 serving). Then when the 20 oz bottles came out, a serving size was 8 oz, servings per container 2.5 and listed the nutrients for 8 oz. Now I think they state 1 serving as 20 oz and list accordingly. (I haven't had one in 2.5 months now!) - It's like each time they changed the label design, a new nutrition label came with it.

My water bottle lists serving size as 8 oz. Servings 2.5