Eat Street: How the world portions its meals

We know Indians love their food, and oodles of it, but how does the rest of the world eat? Here’s a look...

Published: Apr 14, 2017

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Japan: A Japanese saying, hara hachi bu, meaning “eat until you are 80 percent full”, sums up the country’s attitude towards food portions. Naomi Moriyama, who co-authored Japanese Women Don’t Get Old Or Fat: Secrets Of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen, says that, through “beautiful portion control”, an average Japanese eats about 25 percent fewer calories per day than an average American. A traditional meal in the country is served on separate small plates and bowls, instead of a big plate, encouraging diners to have a small tastings of multiple items. Perhaps no mere coincidence that, at 83.7 years, Japan enjoys the highest life expectancy in the world?

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France: Yes, the French love their cheeses, chocolates, full-fat creams and soups made in heaven. But you wouldn’t have them pigging out on them. A typical French meal always prefers quality over quantity, serving multiple courses in limited portions. A study that compared 11 small eateries in Philadelphia and Paris found that a cup of yoghurt served in the former was 82 percent larger than the latter. According to Will Clower, author of The French Don’t Diet Plan: 10 Simple Steps To Stay Thin For Life, the secret to the French way of eating was to relish the food. About 90 percent of the French enjoyed eating compared to about 39 percent of Americans who equated enjoyment with over-consumption.

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US: The true blue big-eaters. Portion sizes in the US not only overshadow those in the developing countries, but the developed ones as well. Picture the multi-tier burger, or the magnum heap of fries. The Americans have done this not only to their own food, but those that they’ve adopted from other countries too. A quesadilla from Mexico made with chicken and cheese in a 5-inch tortilla contains about 540 calories; in the US, it’s a 10-inch tortilla, almost doubling the number of calories. A study at the Florida International University has found that young Asians, who had come from countries like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea gained five pounds soon after they arrived in the US.

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Italy: In Italy, even a light meal comes in multiple courses, but in small portions. The Italians eat not to fill their stomachs, but to taste and enjoy the food, to have the pleasure of eating. That plateful of pasta served in restaurants isn’t how the Italians would have had it. For them, pasta is only a part of the entire meal, often as a small first course, says food expert and author Susan McKenna Grant, either preceded by an antipasto—salami, olives and maybe some crostini, or followed by a secondo—meat, fish, seasonal vegetables, or both.

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Ethiopia: A traditional Ethiopian meal is inherently social and shared communally from a platter. You would see an Ethiopian family gathered around a table and scooping up curries with an injera (a staple flatbread made of teff flour that also doubles up as cutlery for the uninitiated). This family-style serving also makes it difficult to control portions.