Hefty Portions Hurt Waists and Wallets

Where's the beef?

The precedents where the purity, pricing and portion of our food is problematic are perpetual and persistent. Not only are prices for smaller portions high compared to a doubling of the size for 'regular' without a corresponding doubling of price, but even if one tries to eat a healthy diet, they are penalized by premium prices. American's aren't fat today because they don't eat right by choice. They CAN'T AFFORD to eat a healthy diet.

The author's little observation (I'm not sure it's a blog because I get my feeds elsewhere, but it strikes me as merely a thought rather than a report) only scratches at the surface of a national obesity issue that makes the Titanic's sinking seem like mere water weight gain.

It seems to me that if the government is willing to subsidize corn and other produce to encourage production, perhaps subsidizing healthy foods to make them more affordable and a real price competition to all the high salt, high fat, high cholesterol processed foods that are currently substantially cheaper would be a novel and helpful method of encouraging Americans to eat better diets.

If restaurants charged a price based on volume (or calories) rather than pricing things to make the larger portions seem like a better deal, then we'd see many more people buying the 'junior' size because it wouldn't be a bargain to buy the larger one. "Go Big" for only 69 Cents on an item that cost 8 bucks? Double the amount of fries and triple the size of your drink! That makes it a better deal, right? More bang for the ever-shrinking buck! What if that Big was double the price? Would anyone do it? One wonders if that 'junior' size had been called small and sold for $2.45 instead of $3.95 and the regular one was still $4.85, would the author have still gotten the regular one?

Until there is national unity from businesses who are, admittedly, struggling in today's economy over how they charge for their food - in restaurants and in the grocer's - Americans will continue to eat bad diets, gain excessive weight and order the regular or jumbo sizes because it's only a little bit more than the small. And restaurants afraid of losing money on the smaller prices for smaller sizes can advertise that their prices are fair for a healthier portion. Buffets are usually popular because of price - small price, lots of food. People are NOT there for the food. If buffets charged by the ounce rather than the person, they'd go out of business. A restaurant selling a healthy sized meal for 4 and a half bucks and a 'super-size me' meal for 9 bucks will sell a lot of food for $4.50.

As for the article, maybe it was meant for air play rather than reading. It seemed to me to be too short, too little detail, too little research and too little thought. Call it an article "lite": Not too filling or make you think too hard. It could have used a bit more 'beef' in it.

Phillip Campbell of CA @ Mar 04, 2008 13:49:31 PM