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Guesstimating portions with real-world objects

Typical Portion Control Tips/Guidelines

“Deck of cards, Merlin; deck of cards,” my friend Dennis would always say as we sat down to eat ribeyes the size of kittens.

That terrific, if ignored, heuristic for estimating the desirable 3-ounce portion of beef came back to me this week with all the interest in the USDA’s mypyramid.gov site and the new dietary guidelines.

I’m a big of fan of these kinds of rules of thumb and was pleased to turn up this small collection of real-world portion size guesstimates . Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Cooked vegetables – palm of hand
  • Grilled Fish – checkbook
  • 2 TB butter, etc. – thumb (joint to tip)
  • Chopped fruit – tennis ball
  • Apple – baseball
  • Potato – computer mouse
  • Bagel – hockey puck
  • Pancake – CD ROM
  • Steamed rice – cupcake wrapper
  • Cheese – pair of dice
  • 1 oz meat – matchbox
  • 3 oz meat – bar of soap or deck of cards
  • 8 oz meat – thin paperback book

Got any other cool real-world guesstimators?

sarah's picture

i kinda like the tiny...

i kinda like the tiny official portions. when i was little i used to feel really virtuous eating a big orange, because it counted as two fruits.

i've met a lot of people whose high school health classes used food guesstimations in reverse, to describe the size of growing fetuses (jellybean --> shrimp --> pear --> watermelon). the shrimp always creeps me out.

 
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