Lifestyle and Weight Loss For Teens

Ep.9 Does the plate size you serve food for children matter?

January 11, 2023 Dr Jenny Gourgari
Lifestyle and Weight Loss For Teens
Ep.9 Does the plate size you serve food for children matter?
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I describe research that examined whether using larger dishware affects how much food children are eating.

This was published in the journal of Pediatrics 2013;131;e1451

by Yasmeen Bruton and Jennifer O. Fisher Katherine I. DiSantis, Leann L. Birch, Adam Davey, Elena L. Serrano, Jun Zhang,

"Portions and Intake Plate Size and Children's Appetite: Effects of Larger Dishware on Self-Served"

Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .

To get a free copy of 30 healthy and easy recipes for teens that are high in protein, visit
https://lifestyleforteens.com/recipes

To learn more about the LIFT Program, visit lifestyleforteens.com/program

Speaker 1:

Are you getting frustrated with what to feed a teenager who is always hungry? Everybody knows that teenagers have a huge appetite. It seems like you need to feed them constantly to satisfy their hunger. It's even more difficult where teenagers who struggle with their weight truly want to make changes like cut down on junk food or stop ever eating, and they can't. There is frustration, isolation, stress, and that's why I decided to create a recipe collection of 30 easy and healthy meals for teenagers. They are all high in protein to satisfy your teenager's hunger and they can all be ready in less than 30 minutes. If you want to grab a free copy, go to lifestell14scom for the last recipes.

Speaker 2:

This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you are a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgary is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgary does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgary.

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone, this is Dr Gorgary. I am here with you again for another episode which I hope you will also find helpful. I chose this topic because I am sure you have heard about this before, but it is always easier, I find, to actually follow an advice when you know where it comes from. So have you heard about? Using smaller plates may help you with building healthier habits, and this is true for adults, but not so many studies have studied that in children. So I found this study that was to me interested that it really investigated what's the role of the size of the plate when we are trying to find ways to establish healthier habits in children, and will that affect their risk for being overweight. So let's get started.

Speaker 1:

The title of this manuscript is plate size and children's appetite effects of larger this wear on self-serve portions and intake. So the leading author of this research was Dr Catherine DeSantis. This was done at the Department of Community and Global Public Health, our career university, glenside, pennsylvania, and this research was published in one of major high impact journals in the field of pediatrics is called in the Pediatrics Journal. It was published in May of 2013. And why did the authors do this study? What was their main question. As I mentioned, we know that in adults that use a larger plate tend to consume more calories and tend to be more overweight, but in children we don't have so much data, so the researchers try to understand what's the role of using smaller or bigger plates when the children are self serving their meal. All that affect their quantity of the food that they consume. So the idea that children should learn to serve their own food is an idea that you may have heard from your child's pediatrician. You may have heard that it is an important skill that starts very early in children. So even toddlers can have the ability to self-serve themselves and self-regulate. And of course there are some developmental milestones that every child can achieve at different ages. But overall the concept of allowing children to self-regulate how much food they're eating is a very important skill and it is encouraged by pediatric societies.

Speaker 1:

There is, in fact, even a previous study that the researchers mentioned where preschoolers were found to request more cereal and to ask for more cereal to be served when the bowls that they had were larger compared to if their size of the bowl were smaller. So the researchers in this particular topic we're discussing today, they did their study in first grade children in one elementary school in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, and what they did in the school. This was during the kids' lunch break. They took approximately 15 minutes. They had organized a buffet with different entree options and they were giving children either the small plate or the larger plate and they weighed the food that the kid served themselves. They also observed the kids while they were eating the food and at the end of the meal they also weighed the left overfoot on the plate so that way they could estimate how much actual food the kids consumed. So let's just start by saying they looked at first graders and they also excluded children that they had other chronic medical conditions or they were taking medications that could possibly affect their food intake or they had food allergies that could also affect their choices. So they wanted to focus in otherwise healthy children that did not have any underlying conditions, that were not taking any medications.

Speaker 1:

So when they used, as I mentioned, they had two different plates the small plate was a 7.25 inch diameter and the large plate had 10.25 inch diameter, and then the small size bowl that they it was used for fruits and vegetables and side dishes in the first instance was 8 ounces bowl and in the second instance the big plate was associated with a 16 ounces bowl. So in general the large size of plate and bowl was twice the size of the small plate and the small bowl. So they had the option to choose different kinds of meals. So it was either food that was not in predetermined serving size, like for example pasta with meat and sauce, or they had meal options where they could have certain pieces, like for example chicken nuggets. They also had different fruits and vegetables available and all kids were offered fixed portions of milk and bread and those were not self-served like that was offered to all children.

Speaker 1:

And because there was this change in the way that the kids were offered the food, before they actually tried to do the study and try to capture the research data they had a period of adjustment where the kids were introduced to this new style of eating to kind of like have some adjustment period and then after that is when they started to actually collect data. So the buffet table had three serving bowls and they had the entree, the vegetable and the fruit. So the kids were instructed that they would pass from the buffet only one time. They can take as much food as they wish. They can eat as much food as they wish. They can also live on the plate what they don't want to eat anymore. But they were not allowed to share their food with other children and, as I mentioned, they did weigh the food, not directly in front of the kids, but they used a remote reading of the weights so that the kids would not feel that they were in a position of observation on that and they could choose how much they wanted to eat.

Speaker 1:

Another thing the researchers did is that they asked the kids how much they liked the food and they had, like a different scale of likeliness so they could say do you think this food tastes yummy, yucky or just okay? So they could also collect that data on like what's the importance of the lacking of the food in, like how much food they served. They also collected data about the children's weight and height. Again, they calculated the body mass index, which is the measurement of being overweight, and they also collected some demographic questionnaires where they wanted to evaluate different factors, let's say the race, ethnicity, age, what's the family income situation, and they had a way to estimate whether there was food insecurity in the house. In other words, they wanted to see whether kids that did not have a lot of food in their own homes, whether that was affecting their choices or not.

Speaker 1:

So every child was given the opportunity to eat either on a small size plate or on a bigger size plate and was given also the opportunity to either have an entree type that was like an amorphous type, like, let's say, pasta and meatballs, versus also an entree that was with different unit size, like, for example, chicken nuggets. So a total of eight lunches for each child were recorded and the data were analyzed. So let's get to the interesting part. What were the results? Are you ready?

Speaker 1:

So the researchers found that the children that had a larger plate were serving more food to their plates on average 90 colors more than when they used the smaller plates. So when they looked at the particular intake of whether it was the amorphous type of meal or whether it was the single unit, like chicken nuggets or pasta, it really made no difference. You can see that whether it's like pieces that you serve or whether you have a big chunk of food put in your plate, if you have kids had a bigger plate, they tend to have more pieces or they have to have more mass of whatever food they were eating, and the same was true also for the amount of the fruit they serve. So if they had a bigger plate, they also tend to serve more fruit. But that was not true for the amount of vegetables. So the only like even when they had, like a bigger serving bowl for the vegetables, that didn't affect their. They wouldn't get more vegetables.

Speaker 1:

What affected their intake of vegetables and their choices were really was really whether they liked the vegetable or not and in general, whether they liked the food or not also played a role in how much food they were serving themselves. So when the children liked the food, they gave themselves an average of 104 more calories than when they reported that they did not like the food. And whether they liked the fruit or not. That also played a role in whether they in how much fruit they chose. So they tend to choose more fruit if they liked the fruit. So the other thing they looked as whether so there is one thing, how much food you serve on your plate, and then the other thing is how much food you actually eat, right? So what they found was that the kids that served bigger portions consumed also more food than the kids that had served less amount of food. So the amount of food that ends up on the plate plays a major role in the amount of food the children actually eat. Now, as I mentioned, the researchers also looked at some demographic factors and they did not see that the age or the gender or the body mass index influenced how much food the kids were actually serving on the plates. However, one demographic factor that played a role was the food insecurity. So children that came from families that did not have a lot of food in their homes tended to serve more food when they were at school.

Speaker 1:

So let's summarize this study. So what is the take home message? What does this study show us? And yes, it is a small study, but it has some useful, I find, messages. So it is clear that, similar to what has been found in adults, that when adults use a larger plate, they tend to consume more calories and they tend to eat more food. Similar data exists for kids that are young, as like first graders, and we don't have data from this study from other age groups, and we don't have information on how these kids do when they are at home. So, of course, a lot of more research can be done on this topic. However, it gives a signal that the plate that children have is also important in determining how much food they serve to themselves and also how much food eventually they may consume.

Speaker 1:

So if you are a kid and you're listening to that, to this podcast, or if you're a parent and you are wanting to find a method to help your children make healthier choices, I would suggest that this could be. One of the things you can try is choose smaller plates, and it's actually a good habit, not only for children but the whole family. We're so used to bigger plates, bigger portions, and getting this visual satisfaction that my plate is full is actually maybe more important than what we think. So I invite you to go to your kitchen, open the cabinets, look at the plates, choose your favorite plates and see whether you can select some of the smaller size plates and try to serve your meals in those, and let me know what happens and let me know if this was helpful. I hope it was useful information that you can start applying on your daily life right away. So it was a pleasure talking to you again today and I'll be with you again next weekend with another episode. Take care, my friends, bye-bye.

Speaker 2:

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the Lift program. It's Dr Gorgary's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteanscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.