Big Portions

Via Chris Bertram, a nice demonstration of the growing size of food portions in the United States. Naturally, this trend toward increased consumption of calories has not been a good thing for public health. It's also part of the reason I think rich countries like the United States are going to weather the long-run consequences of higher food and energy prices just fine -- at the low prices that have been prevailing recently, we're consuming substantially more than is good for us. Switching to an equilibrium where less food is eaten and more attention is paid to quality (in terms of both taste and nutrition) will be beneficial once the switching is done. Of course there's always what Keynes said about the long-run, but it still is worth distinguishing between long-run trends that point toward doom, and those that do not.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/06/big-portions/48780/