Perfect portions and savvy servings

65% of adults in the UK admit that they buy too much food and much of it goes to waste.

Did you know that having too much food can also lead to over-consumption. It’s estimated that 64% of British adults are overweight, having a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more. This includes around 28% of adults who are obese (with a BMI of 30 or more), making the UK the most overweight nation in western Europe.

To responsibly tackle food waste and help you to maintain or attain a healthy well-balanced diet, it’s best to tackle the issue by assessing our portion sizes and servings.

Portion sizes are important whenever we do anything to, or with, our food that might increase its chances of going to waste. That includes:

1. When we buy it – hopefully you have already started thinking about how much food you need to buy at the stage you are meal planning and/or writing shopping lists and consider buying loose items.
2. When we prepare it (for example if the food needs peeling, chopping or when it goes into the freezer)
3. When we cook it (if it needs cooking)
4. When we serve it

Brush up on your knowledge of portions and serving sizes

A portion  is the amount of food that you choose to eat for a meal or snack. It can be big or small, you decide.

A serving is a measured amount of food or drink, such as one slice of bread or one cup of milk. Recommended serving sizes are there to help us to maintain a healthy well-balanced diet.

Many foods are packaged and sold in multiple-serving formats, but it’s not always obvious and it can be easy to assume that they contain one portion. The nutrition label on packaged foods, on the backs of cans, sides of boxes, etc. usually tells you the number of servings in the packaging. It’s worth checking these if you aren’t already in the habit of doing so.

You could try using a food waste diary such as this one. Keep it by your kitchen bin, and whenever you find yourself throwing food away, jot down what it is, roughly how much there is and why it’s being thrown away.

Do you measure or guestimate your portion sizes?

In an ideal world we would have the time to carefully measure out portions of foods to avoid unnecessary waste and to help us maintain a healthy and well-balanced diet.

45% of adults in the UK report that they feel time pressured in their day-to-day lives, and rather than looking up recommended portion sizes and breaking out the weighing scales, measuring cups and so on, we often do “guestimate”.

It also leaves us vulnerable in terms of the amount of food we buy and eat, and evidence suggests that more often than not guesstimated portions are too large. It’s not a good idea to meal plan, go shopping or guesstimate your portions when you are hungry. Doing so dramatically increases the chances that you’ll buy, cook or serve more food than you can eat.

Where to get reliable advice on portion sizes

Not all foods have portioning advice on them, and even if they do, the advice can be confusing or unhelpful. If you need to find reliable portion size advice elsewhere we recommend that you use one of the portioning tools linked below;

• the NHS eatwell guidance (or the guidance of a health care professional if you need a special diet). The NHS have also developed a free food scanner app to make the process of finding nutritional information a bit simpler
• the Love Food Hate Waste portion calculator – simply type in the type of food you are portioning, and the number of adults and children eating and you’ll be given all the info you need

Although we strongly recommend that you follow the NHS eatwell guide and aim for a healthy, well-balanced diet, your health and personal preference might vary. Please follow any medical advice you have been given, and otherwise use the recommended portion as a starting point and adjust it to what suits you and the needs / appetites of the people you are feeding.

Portioning for kids

Research suggests that many babies are born with the innate ability to self-regulate their food intake, enabling them to almost magically eat just the right amount of food to give them the energy and nutrition they need to live and grow and nothing more. Most children lose that ability by the time they are three or four years old, and at that point they begin learning what’s in a ‘normal’ diet, and what a ‘normal’ portion size looks like from the people caring for them.

It can be stressful if you consistently find that your children are regularly leaving food on their plates at the end of meals. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of official advice on how much food children of different ages should eat. The NHS simply recommend that parents and carers follow the principles of the eatwell guide when feeding children, and that they use judgement when it comes to portion sizes.

Good strategies for reducing food waste with children:

• Talking to your children at an early age about the importance of a healthy diet and demonstrating what that looks like at mealtimes.
• Help children to choose their own portion sizes – by letting them put food on their own plates.
• Talk to your children about the negative consequences of wasting food – using your judgement on how to pitch the message.
• Serve small portions initially, but make it clear they can ask for more if they are still hungry.
• Involve children in meal choices and preparations. Children are more likely to eat food they have helped to prepare / cook themselves.
• For smaller children, use smaller plates.

Speed up portion measurements

The ideal way to measure most solid foods is by weight.

A good way to claim back some time is to weigh out the portions of foods you cook regularly once. Transfer the weighed portion into a handy container in the kitchen, for example a cup or a mug and note how full it is. The next time you want to cook that item of food, grab your mug and fill it up to the same level again.

A note on cooking dried foods: dried food such as rice and pasta are commonly wasted because we cook more than we can eat. Both absorb water as they cook causing them to swell, increasing in size and weight. A single serving of dried rice (weighing 75g) fills about quarter of a cup. Once cooked, the rice will expand to nearly fill the cup to the brim, and it will end up weighing approximately 180g.