Restaurant portions are about to get smaller. Are Americans ready?
The towering burger and ballooning bagel have withstood public health campaigns, but a new movement to shrink servings is finally gaining traction
PORTION sizes in American restaurants shot up in the 1980s and never came down. The average serving of spaghetti and meatballs doubled. Bagels ballooned into six-inch-wide monstrosities. Burritos started to weigh more than a Harry Potter hardcover.
Nutritionists and policymakers haven’t had much success fighting portion creep, which has been linked to health problems associated with obesity. Attempts to legislate soda sizes were shot down. Calorie counts on menus have largely gone ignored and might even be harmful. Even celebrity-dusted public health campaigns from the White House didn’t move the needle much.
But today, a combo plate of economics, demographics and climate science may accomplish what years of official hand-wringing could not: loosening the grip that supersize restaurant portions have on the national diet.
Americans are not likely to break up with endless pasta bowls and half-pound burgers overnight. But the relationship has shifted significantly. More than 75 per cent of customers say they want smaller portions for less money, according to the 2024 National Restaurant Association report on the industry.
Restaurants sinking under rising food are trying to figure out how to sell smaller servings without upsetting value-minded customers. This month, the Portion Balance Coalition, based at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, began a year-long study to puzzle out the problem. They hope to sign on at least 10 high-volume chains such as Panda Express and Chick-fil-A.
Food costs aren’t the only pressure on serving sizes. As much as 40 per cent of food served at restaurants never gets eaten, according to a 2020 study on food waste. In an effort to slow climate change, states including California and Massachusetts have restricted how much food can end up in landfills. And millions of people taking GLP-1 drugs are eating much less than they once did.
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“Snackification”
Then there’s what market researchers call “snackification”. Especially among younger people, traditional meals are being replaced with snacks and small assemblages of food that approximate meals. Millennials and Gen Z-ers in particular are snacking more as a way to manage schedules that vary widely day to day, to explore bolder flavours in a low-risk way and to create more nutritionally sound diets.
On average, US adults describe half the occasions they eat in a day as snacks, according to data from the Hartman Group, a market research company.
For younger diners, value is a much more complex calculus than getting the largest portion for the lowest price, said Shelley Balanko, the group’s senior vice-president. They care about whether a price is fair, given the quality of the ingredients and cost of labour, and how much their food impacts the environment.
“When it comes to quantity,” she said, “it’s the right size for me or for my needs at the moment.”
Customising portion sizes should be as easy as it is for a morning coffee or a lunchtime salad, said Dana Gunders, the president of ReFED, the nation’s leading organisation fighting food waste and one of the groups working on the Georgetown portion study.
She’d like to see restaurants offer half-bowl options or baby burritos. “I can customise everything about my order except the size,” she said. “People want this choice, and they are not getting it.”
Many diners already navigate their way around big portions by ordering kids’ meals, sticking to appetisers or embracing restaurants that offer shareable small plates.
Meal bundles – a collection of dishes sold in family-size portions for a slightly reduced price – have become popular in these inflationary times. At Olive Garden, for example, a lasagna bundle with salad and breadsticks designed to serve four to six people costs about US$59. Diners can stretch the food into several meals or feed more people than the menu suggests.
When Abby Fammartino eats out with her husband and son, they control how much they get by underordering. “We may only order two things to share because we know that the portion sizes are high,” she said.
As the director of health and sustainability programmes and research at the Culinary Institute of America, Fammartino is coordinating the year-long experiment with ReFED and the Portion Balance Coalition, an organisation that began in 2017 and collaborates with food manufacturers, restaurant chains, researchers and the US Department of Agriculture.
“Portion distortion”
Among the questions they’re asking: How can restaurants shift diners’ perspectives on appropriate portion sizes? Would it help to change menu descriptions, use smaller plates or add images to show the size of each dish? How about serving fewer french fries but allowing diners to order more for free? Many diners wouldn’t, but it might feel like a good deal – and help the restaurant avoid throwing away uneaten food.
Part of the problem, researchers say, is that most people have no idea what a reasonable amount of food looks like because they have “portion distortion”.
“Once you get used to larger portions, anything that looks like a normal-sized portion seems like you are getting cheated,” said Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who has researched the link between portion size and obesity.
“I think it’s very hard to go back. It feels awful to people.”
In a 2023 experiment with three independent restaurants in Southern California, Kaiser Permanente helped create a “balanced portions” menu that featured portion sizes that nutritionists would consider reasonable. Restaurant dinner portions average about 900 to 1,500 calories, and the balanced-portion dinners are not more than 700 calories. That might include three ounces of chicken, three-quarters of a cup of rice and a couple of cups of vegetables.
The approach proved so popular that two restaurants decided to keep it. One that didn’t want to change its larger portions marketed them as “dinner today, lunch tomorrow”. Two new restaurants have since joined the study.
But many customers like portion sizes the way they are, said Kevin Hochman, CEO and president of Brinker International, which owns Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy, a chain he said was built on the concept that “Grandma always wanted you to leave overly stuffed and feeling like you can’t eat any more.”
For every guest who wants the chance to customise a meal, he said, there’s another who doesn’t want to do all that work. For every diner seeking smaller portions, there’s one who wants to splurge on a hearty meal or get the most for their money.
“There is a truth about American consumers: People want what they want,” he said. “It’s our job to meet guests where they are and not where we think they should be.”
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