"More is better" American mentality

Let's be clear right off the bat. More is not better!

You spend more money. You eat more calories. You have more waste. You have more overload.

Madison Ave. wants you to measure value of food by the quantity. But bigger portions always cost more than you wanted to pay. Bigger portions always cost you more calories than you originally wanted.

My dad taught me value. If a Coke was $1 for one bottle, and $1.50 for two, then buying two was the better value. Wrong, dad. The way to save money (and calories) was not to buy the second bottle at all. [Try telling that story to the thousands of people right now at that Sam's Club or Costco.]

Quality -- not quantity -- is the best value. Especially when it comes to your health.

Let's stop the wrong American mentality.

Don't buy the advertising hype. Don't supersize. Don't get the second portion. Don't frequent restaurants that load up the plate with quantity, and questionable quality. Educate yourself and your family. Tell them you love them more than McDonald's. You love them more than Applebee's. Help them choose the RightSize.

The NY Times reports:

“We’re often encouraged to buy larger-sized portions and ‘value meals’ because they provide a better value for our money,” Lisa Drayer, a registered dietician and director of nutrition services with Dietwatch.com says. “But while these oversized portions may be good for our wallets, they are not necessarily good for our waistlines or our health.”

A 1994 informal survey found that the standard plate size in the restaurant industry grew in the early 1990s, from 10 inches to 12. That holds 25 percent more food.

That really makes a difference in how much our plates can hold and how much we eat from them.

Obesity expert Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said the idea of “value pricing” in fast food restaurants, which sells much larger portions for a minor cost increase, has also changed perceptions at home.

''The most surprising result is the larger portion size increases for food consumed at home – a shift that indicates marked changes in eating behavior in general,'' he wrote in a study published in 2003.

My dad had his first heart attack at 50 years old. He knew value. He didn’t know healthy portions.