Portion Control

If you read the label on every food product there are “suggested serving” quantities listed for your recommended daily allowances.  When I really look at these, I’m unsure if any person could survive on this type of portion control.  If you are an 8-14 year old athletic male, it is next to impossible to survive on these recommended daily allowances.  The two that struck me as in- excusable were Tab soda and Kelloggs Frosted Mini Wheats.  Tab was introduced when I was about 10 may be sooner, maybe later.  Who cares?  At this point in my life I was totally uninterested in diet soda.  But I do remember the total number of servings in a 12oz can being 2.  Are you kidding me 2 servings?  Drink up o’thirsty one, your 6oz serving of soda, quite possibly only 2 swallows if you were really thirsty.  Now for my breakfast; my sisters and I did enjoy Frosted Mini Wheats.  Now I know what you are thinking.  “Man, your mom gave you Mini Wheats?”  “You guys were spoiled!”  “We only had generic Toasty O’s.”  Allow me to continue.  My mom would leave us instructions for our breakfast.  This note would include how much of each breakfast entrée we could consume; i.e. 2 pieces of toast, one glass of juice (Hi-C grape of course), one tablespoon peanut butter etc.  So, on this box of Mini Wheats, the suggested serving size is 4 BISCUITS.  My mom thought this was federal law.  She would also threaten to never buy these again if there were even a suggestion about portion control.  According to her this serving size was plenty and exceeding this recommended daily amount would cause extreme obesity and strain on the family budget.  At a time of my life when I needed valuable calories to get me to my delicious school lunch, I was allowed a mere 4 BISCUITS!  This portion control would barely sustain me until I caught the school bus, let alone until lunch.  My 4 BISCUITS would be consumed in about 90seconds, leaving a yearning for at least 12 more.  Maybe she could have served Tab instead of juice, but we wouldn't want to get bloated for breakfast!  My thinking is that every mom in the United States was doing the same thing.  Why would I think this you ask?  Maybe this is why the fast food chains of my generation thought of the “super size” meals.  This is our way of getting back at those portion control freaks.  Or maybe why my generation is over weight?  Maybe our mothers were smarter than we thought.