Your mother was all wrong!

Every mother has said, "finish your plate". As Americans we can't stand to see our children or ourselves leave one little bite of food on our plates.

Our natural tendencies is to overeat and finish every bite. "Why...people are staving in India", was the reason I was told.

"You want a second heaping?" is something I heard a lot at my family's dinner table. If I said no, the immediate response was, "you don't like it." It was assumed that you had to have at least two helpings if something was extra good. To eat just one heaping of every food on the table was an insult to my mother. She had spent a good amount of time preparing this food, and we should be glad we have and be glad to eat a lot of it.

We all have carried on those instructions from our moms to our homes today, and to our actions when we eat out. Nutritionists tell us to split our restaurant meals in half, and take the rest home. When is the last time you saw someone eat just half of his french fries and wrap the rest to go? Or we are told to split meals with a friend. Again, who orders a "value" meal and says let's split it between us.

These RightSize instructions from nutritionists are great, just not practical. Restaurants need to change its portion sizes to help us.

Can all the mothers in the world unite? We want -- we demand -- the RightSize of food.

"Don't eat all your food," should be what we tell our children.