Nutrition News is your guide to healthy eating! Browse our site to find health tips,             low-cholesterol, low-fat recipes, and healthy ingredient substitutions.             Read our features or choose a subject from the menu.              Part 2: Serving Sizes for Meat, Fish and Poultry Part 1: Lifestyle Changes

February 2001

Last month we talked about the growing obesity epidemic in this country. Because of the seriousness of this problem, we feel compelled to provide some tools that will help you make the lifestyle changes necessary to lose weight (if you need to), become fit, and to live long and healthy lives.

We are going to devote the next 4 months of columns to information on serving sizes or "portion control". This month we will focus on meat, fish, and poultry. Next month we’ll cover fruits and vegetables. In April, we will discuss dairy products and for the last column in the series, we will give you some help with restaurant portions.

Serving Sizes 

Serving sizes are important because the nutrition facts (calories, grams of fat, protein and carbohydrate, etc.) are based on a certain portion. How do you know what a serving is? With processed and/or packaged foods, it’s easy to tell because it’s on the label. Other categories of food are more difficult to determine.

A "serving" of meat, fish, or poultry is 3-4 ounces cooked weight, without bone or skin. Many people don’t know what that serving size looks like. It has the approximate dimensions of a new deck of cards, a cassette tape, or your checkbook .

Here are some additional hints that might help you with portions of meat, fish and poultry: Make 4 hamburger patties from one pound of lean ground meat. Count the number boneless, skinless chicken breast halves in the package and divide the total package weight by this number. That will tell you approximately how many ounces each piece weighs. Packaged lunch meats are usually cut into 1-ounce slices. Bones, in cuts of meat or poultry, account for 1-2 ounces.

For Your Information: The most important factors influencing the fat and calorie content of meat, fish and poultry are: serving size: a 3-4 ounce portion how lean it is cooking methods: bake, broil, grill, roast on a rack out of its own drippings

In Practice:

When we rehabbed the recipe below, we omitted 1/4 pound of ground beef to reduce the ounces of meat per serving, and substituted bacon bits for 4 slices of bacon. Our taste-testers could not tell the difference between the original and the rehab.

Generously spray large pot (Dutch oven works great) with vegetable oil spray. Over medium heat, sauté garlic and green pepper; add ground beef and brown. Drain off any fat, and blot meat mixture with paper towel. Add remaining ingredients and stir to mix. Bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove bay leaf and cloves. (If dish gets too dry, add more water or tomato juice.)