A Boomer and GenXer Walk into a Bar
Wit and wisdom, some smart assery, and a Mother and Daughter questioning “Are we even related?”
A Boomer and GenXer Walk into a Bar
Portion Distortion In America- Supersize Me!! S:02E:33
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A pork sandwich that spills over the plate. Fries that look like a pile meant for a whole table. Drinks that feel like a small bucket with a lid. American portion sizes can be so big that visitors are genuinely stunned, and we think that shock is a clue worth following.
We’re getting ready to travel, and it kicks off a blunt, funny, and surprisingly practical talk about how the United States drifted into supersize culture. We connect the dots between fast food marketing, the late-70s and 80s push for “bigger is better,” and how “only 60 cents more” can translate into a much higher daily calorie intake over time. We also get into why processed foods make it easier to overeat, why many “single serving” items are nowhere near a single serving anymore, and how oversized plates at home and in restaurants quietly rewrite what we think is normal.
What’s the most absurd portion size you’ve seen where you live?
Subscribe, share this with a friend who always finishes the basket of chips, and leave a review. Then reply or email us your local portion-size horror story and your best leftover move.
email: boomerandgenxer@gmail.com
Welcome And Off-The-Rails Banter
SPEAKER_02Welcome everyone to face the market. Welcome to a team from the Red Run studio where you, as our listener, will experience some wit wisdom, some smart acry, and a mother and daughter questioning, are we even related? My name is Bobby Joy, and my co host co-host is my mom Jane. And uh for the next little while we're here to entertain. You know, it sounds like I'm the one that had all the drinks today.
SPEAKER_01I know it does kind of sound like that, but you know, it's one of those days, man. I've already had one martinium, one martinian. And you know, if I get to two, my skirt's over my head. And so, you know, that that's not a pretty sight at my age. There's nothing sexy about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I don't want to see that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so yeah, we can see each other. Thank goodness our listeners can't see us because if my skirt went over my head, that would not be attractive.
SPEAKER_02We might get more ratings.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I don't know. People, well, yeah, we'd get a lot of we'd get a lot of hate mail. Put that down, put that skirt down for the love of God.
SPEAKER_02Search you and OnlyFans for grannies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Hey, maybe I could make some money though.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_01You never know, because don't they make money off of that? Huge money, huge money, yeah. So I could get it from having you know really low boobs and wrinkled skin. I don't know. I don't know. There's I I'm just saying, I got Dr. Domain over here going, what the hell? What the hell? Seriously.
SPEAKER_02I had a little uh overindulgence in American culture there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Hey, uh, so you know what we were thinking uh is you and I had this, oh crap. I my phone just went off, and we always talk about never turn off your phone. Oh my goodness. We we talk about making sure everything is silent, like the dogs and all of our electronics and all that crap. And then I'm the one who is just relentless with everybody, and then it's always my equipment that goes off. What were you gonna say, Dr. Domain?
SPEAKER_02He's just sitting there shaking his head. Oh, not nothing.
SPEAKER_00I was just it just sounded like it was a theme to Star Wars or something. Like you have the lightsaber sound or something, which is totally unlikely.
SPEAKER_01So for God's sake. Just be aware of that. I might use it on, I might use it on you later. That almost sounded naughty, didn't it? I didn't almost almost almost hey uh you know what I want to talk about today?
Why U.S. Portions Shock Visitors
SPEAKER_01We are getting ready to go out of the country for uh you know short vacation. Okay, it's not so short, but we're going on vacation out of the country. And uh Dr. Domain travels out of the country for work and stuff, and one of the things that people talk about when they come to the United States, large food portions in the US. Have you ever heard anybody talk about that?
SPEAKER_00Yesterday.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. Yesterday, oh yeah, you were in Boston yesterday.
SPEAKER_00I was in Boston yesterday. Well, Boston, Boston, Boston, and went to just a really great place, right there um on the harbor. And my co-worker is from London, and he he thought it was just the biggest portion he'd ever seen.
SPEAKER_01Was it?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. I mean, we're we're accustomed to it, but yeah, it's more than anyone should really have to need to eat.
SPEAKER_01Even for you in the US, did it look like a big portion or did it just look like that?
SPEAKER_00It just looks like anything any you know pig of an American would drink, you know, or eat. It just float over the plate. There was a French fries and like the bun, it was um like a chicken sandwich and it kind of spread out brioche bun. Yeah, and then it would it had a uh the other half you couldn't even tell where it was. It was covered and all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_01And so he thought that was appalling.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I said, buddy, wait till you see a tenderloin.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so um in the US, obviously the US significantly exceeds you know international standards because I don't know of any other country that serves up what we serve here in the United States. And, you know, uh Super Size. Have you ever watched that show, Supersize Me?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, how crazy is that? And you think about the amount of calories, and we wonder why we're fat Americans. I mean, for crying out loud.
SPEAKER_02We wonder why heart disease is the number one killer closely by cancer.
SPEAKER_01Quit shoving that crap in your face for crying out loud. Push it away from push yourself away from the table.
SPEAKER_00But he put it on so quickly, like he put on so much weight, and then it took him months and months and months to get it off.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he did put it on really quick because it was like 30 days, wasn't it? It wasn't very long. Yeah, it was only like months, but it took him like six months.
SPEAKER_00And then one of the rules is he had to always take the super size. If they offered it, if they offered it. What do they call it? What do they call it at McDonald's? Yeah, would you like to like the super size guy? He's like he's like puking. I mean, there's no way the guy could handle it, and that's all he could eat for that period of time.
SPEAKER_01So they started increasing the sizes, and I'm only really talking about fast food right now in 1980. That's when we really saw the epidemic
Supersizing And The Obesity Spike
SPEAKER_01start, and that's when we saw obesity rates just immediately skyrocket. And we've talked about this before because we talked about the FDA and and the Food and Drug Administration and and uh, you know, what's in our food and whether or not you're really focused on, you know, processed foods. And I really am a firm believer it isn't sugar, it isn't fat, it is processed foods. It is the crap that they put in our food that makes us fat. But let's face it, you see some of these portion sizes and you go, y'all gonna eat all that, or is that for a family of four?
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's true though. I mean, ever since, you know, and it has been late 70s, early 80s, it we had a lot of things going on, you know, especially with the farm subsidies, you know, these farmers were getting paid to grow more food. Um, you know, Americans were really honestly, I think it was kind of like a rebound from from the World War, from World War II, where you know, we were very meager with with our portions and things like that, because a lot of people, you know, were were limited to what they could get. And I think honestly, I think like mentally as a nation, we were like, well, we can get more for our money now, so why aren't we eating all of this?
SPEAKER_01Right. No, you're absolutely right on that, and um, you know, it's the way it was marketed, right? So whether you call it supersized or whether you, you know, called it um, you know, the whopper or whatever it was, you know, bigger was always better.
SPEAKER_02And they looked at it a small amount of money, right?
SPEAKER_01They looked at it based on what they were paying. And it was like, well, why wouldn't I get the whopper? You know, it's only 50 cents more. That's you know, I can I can have that maybe tomorrow, half of it tomorrow. Okay, they didn't see it.
SPEAKER_02And and and the promotion, you know, you look at the commercials, you look at, you know, you drive by uh a fast food chain and they're advertising the bigger better. You look at, you know, what the employees are wearing, the pins, the placemats, the you know, everything leads you to the larger size for only 60 cents more. Why wouldn't you get that?
SPEAKER_01Right. And so they look at it as a deal, you know, based on their money, they look at it as a deal. And you know, I remember being in a McDonald's one time, and you might have been with me. I don't remember, but this guy was just yelling and screaming at this little guy behind the counter who was trying to take his order. And, you know, he made the comment, and I I usually don't say anything, and you were younger, otherwise, I am sure you would have crawled on top of that counter. But he said, You're gonna regret. And I said, the only thing he regrets is making ten dollars an hour and putting up with your bullshit that you think you can feed a family of five on $20. If you want better service than that, go down the road. And I mean, it was it just ticked me off. It was like, you know, what are you expecting for minimal amount of money that you're paying? You expect, you know, five-star service. Sorry, you're not gonna get five-star food either. But I wanted to
Midwest Tenderloins And Food Culture
SPEAKER_01talk a little bit, Bobby. Um, we can come back to some of the standards and stuff, but I wanted to talk a little bit about what we're used to in the Midwest because I will tell you, being down here in the South, people have never heard of a tenderloin like we know them in Iowa.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, tenderloins are like God's food here in Iowa. So they really are.
SPEAKER_01Dr. Domain and I were talking to some people the other day, and they said, you know, we had never even heard of them. We had never seen them, and we were talking about the size of these. Now, it's not uncommon in Iowa because we're a pork and you know, we're a pork state, and um, it's not uncommon to see a tenderloin, a fried tenderloin, breaded fried tenderloin that is bigger than your plate. Bigger than your head, bigger than your head, easily, and they are so good. I mean, if people knew, but you buy one and people think that they have to eat the whole thing. And you know, if I I don't buy them because I can't eat bread, but you know, sometimes you look at it and go, that's a family of four right there on that one plate. That's a lot of it.
Smaller Plates And Unlearning Clean Plate
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and if you think about back in the day, because you mentioned, you know, back World War II, back in the day, you know, one of the targets was like a thousand calories a day.
SPEAKER_00What did your dad eat when you went to McDonald's? Which was probably rare.
SPEAKER_01This is interesting because when I was growing up, you know, they didn't have the wide variety of what they have today.
SPEAKER_00But you're daddy, but but explain to the audience how large your dad was.
SPEAKER_01He wasn't a small man. No, my dad was six foot three, uh, ex-marine, um had a waist that was super, you know, he had a small waist, he was built, the man was built. He was very muscular, he was a mechanic, um, and very in in great shape. I mean, my dad was in really great shape. And if we got to go to McDonald's, we were super poor. So it would, you know, we didn't get all the good stuff. We didn't get a malt, we didn't get or shake, whatever they had. Um sometimes we didn't get french fries, we would just get a hamburger. But my dad got a hamburger and a small french fry, which is a kid's meal today, and a small Coke, and that was it. That's what he ate.
SPEAKER_00And so, you know, that probably wasn't considered to be he wasn't starving. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01He wasn't starving. That was uh that was his meal. And you know, sometimes we would get French fries, or sometimes we would have to split French fries. I remember getting a hamburger, but the hamburgers that they had back then were like kids' hamburgers today, and the French fries, super small, super small french fries, and a very small Coke. And he was he was a good sized man, and like you said, you know, he he wasn't for her, he wasn't hurting. Um, but back in those days, a thousand calories for women, uh, or even men, a thousand calories was a normal day. Now, more than a thousand calories is a sandwich, or even just a side of cake, yeah, like a slice of cake. Yeah, and so you think about you go in and you get an appetizer. Let's say that you go to a restaurant where they bring you chips and dip, or they bring you something.
SPEAKER_02And that's my kryptonite.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're eating that, and then you're ordering your food, and then you're considering, you know, do I want a dessert? And so, you know, that we wonder why the obesity rates are crazy, and people go, Well, I'm still hungry. Well, quit shoving shit in your mouth. Excuse my language, quit shoving crap in your mouth, man. You know, there's a reason why the US has such a high obesity rate. And if we look at the standards, the U.S. fast food items are are so much larger with French fries weighing how much what percentage do you think that they're they're more than any other country?
SPEAKER_02They've got to be at least 30% bigger.
SPEAKER_01What do you think, Dr. Domain?
SPEAKER_00I'll go on average, 35%.
SPEAKER_0175%. 75% more than any other country. What about the soft drinks? What do you think those are? How much bigger? On average, 80. What do you think, Bobby?
SPEAKER_0259.
SPEAKER_0152%. And that's really larger than the European counterparts because they only compared the drinks to the European counterparts.
SPEAKER_00And do they include the big slurpees? It looks like uh pony keg with a handle on it.
SPEAKER_01No, a pony cake.
SPEAKER_00That's what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01Those are for road trips. No, so um, since the 1970s and 80s, because you mentioned the 80s, Bobby. Well, even before that, uh, many of the single serving items that you see really in fast food restaurants, but even other restaurants, are anywhere from two to five times bigger than they used to be. And that was as of 2002. Think about what they are today, because they're they're much larger than they were in 2002.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think, you know, one thing that the restaurants do, and even at home that we've done, and I know, mom, you have traveled extensively, um, you know, worldwide travel, especially when you were working, is you look at our dinner plates, and they have got to be at least double, sometimes triple the size of dinner plates at restaurants that are overseas. And so, you know, you look at this dinner plate and you think, well, I've got to fill it. Well, now that it's full, I've got to eat it.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02Get a smaller freaking plate.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's funny you say that, Bobby, because one of the tricks to dieting, to eating less, and I think Weight Watchers may have been the ones that that um introduced me to this, is use a smaller plate because psychologically we feel like we have to fill it, right? So if you it it's like I don't know what it is about the human nature, but like if you even wrote down one through ten on a piece of paper, you would feel like you had to fill out every all ten of those lines because we we feel like we have to fill it up.
SPEAKER_00It works, and it it it does, but yeah, because the other day when I was at ball in Boston, I wanted to get some cannolis, and I said, put it in a small box, and it made it seem that much smaller to me.
SPEAKER_01Did you get less than a little bit of a colour?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean they could put probably 10 cannolis in a small box.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's not what we're talking about. Dr. Domain, you're missing the whole point. It's not like you just shove all that back into one small box. It's that if you use a smaller plate, and Bobby, you said it, if you use a smaller plate and you feel like you because we do feel like we have to fill it up, you're gonna have less, right?
SPEAKER_02And the other and a lot of us as kids are told clean your plate.
SPEAKER_01Right. What a what a horrible thing we were told there, right?
SPEAKER_00And we grow up, you know, uh that wasn't necessarily horrible though.
SPEAKER_01It was horrible. It was in a way if you were overfilling their plate.
SPEAKER_00Well, if your portion size was reasonable.
SPEAKER_01That's right, you know, back in our day, you know, we weren't given that much food. And so to clean our plate was really no big deal. You know, that was pretty easy to do.
SPEAKER_00It was obvious, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but you think about it like, you know, kids, kids my age, you know, we're we've grown up, clean your plate. Well, you know, we got in trouble. We had to sit at that damn table till morning if we didn't clean our plate of our vegetables and stuff. I mean, there was that fear of punishment and shame if we didn't clean our plate. Well, now we have children, we have these giant dinner plates, we don't know portion size properly because we're Americans. So we're giving our kids way too much food and we're passing on the whole clean your plate idea. And we are producing kids that are obese by the time they are five years old.
Parenting Food Rules That Actually Work
SPEAKER_01Right. And the other thing is, is mothers and fathers are making three, three or four meals because kids don't like what they're making. When you kids were kids, when you kids were kids, uh, I don't know if you remember this, because I did this to my grandkids too. Is you know, I wasn't a men, I wasn't a restaurant and I wasn't taking orders. And whatever I put out there, that's what you were gonna eat. And if you guys said, No, I don't want that, I said, okay. I mean, I never said you gotta clean your plate. You remember, Bobby? I said, Okay, that's fine. And I would take your plate and I would wrap it up and I would put it in the refrigerator. And later on that night, when you said, I'm starving, I need something to eat, I'd pull that plate out and you'd go, No, that's not what I want. And I go, Well, this is what we have. And then the next morning, if you didn't eat it that night, the next morning for breakfast, you were starving and you ate it. And it really did kind of teach you guys a lesson because you knew I wasn't gonna make three or four meals. There was no way I was gonna, you know, and I tried to make what you kids liked. It wasn't like I was making liver and onions, for goodness sakes. But, you know, if you didn't want it at that time, hey, I'm not making another meal. I don't know. These parents who were making three meals, uh, I can't
The Hidden Cost Of Bigger Servings
SPEAKER_01even imagine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and you know, you had mentioned um Weight Watchers had taught you about the smaller uh plates and things like that, but you know, they're they're kind of backhanded in that because you know they're frozen meals, they have their frozen meals like lean cuisine and Weight Watchers. Um, they they've actually increased the size of their meals for those frozen meals.
SPEAKER_01Hungry Man, Hungry Man TV dinners. Oh, yeah, frozen dinners got huge store your in your neighborhood.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, frozen dinners have gotten huge, restaurants use larger dinner plates, bakers are using larger muffin tins. So we have these gigantic muffins that we think are supposed to be a serving, and they're about five.
SPEAKER_01What are they called? Oh, mammoth muff muffins, aren't they at like Baker Square or something? Mammoth muffins. Yeah. Oh, give me, give me five of those right away.
SPEAKER_02I mean, just because it's it's not that much more for that larger portion size doesn't mean that the cost of it is it doesn't mean that there's not a cost to it. Right. You know, that 60 cents over time is going to cost you know thousands of dollars in bills for your doctor. Right. You know, it it's gonna cost your your vitality, your time with your kids, your health, and things like that. And I know, I know mom's kind of side-eyed me because I'm not one to talk about you know, health and things like that. Because let me tell you what, if you put tacos or enchiladas or anything in front of me, it's over.
Listener Prompt And Sign-Off
SPEAKER_02Okay, like I'll eat 10 of them and not even blink. But you know, one thing mom doesn't know is with my uh injury lately, I have actually switched to a less animal product diet because animal products cause inflammation in the body. And so I am actually on minimal animal products right now. And so portion sizes are are a big thing for me right now, and what I eat is a big thing for me right now. So uh yeah, so it affects your health for sure, you know.
SPEAKER_01But think about what you have in your areas, every territory is different. The Midwest is different from the south. We all have different food types and we all have different serving sizes. And I don't know, maybe take a step back and look at what you're doing in your face.
SPEAKER_02That burrito might be as big as your head, but you can string that out over three days. You don't have to eat all that in one sitting. That's right. We have we have microwaves, for God's sake. That's right.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that's all the food absurdity we have for today. I would like to hear from our listeners, though, on what you guys have in your areas, geographic areas that that you think is really crazy. Um, we appreciate you joining us at the Rabbit Run Studio. Be sure to follow us. We look forward to spending time with you. Like us, share us, provide some positive feedback or a topic that you want us to talk about, or drop us a short email at Boomer and Gen Xer at gmail.com. If you want hate mail, we're not interested. Anyway, until next week, I'm Jane Burt.
SPEAKER_02And I'm Bobby Joy. And you're stuck with us. Peace out later.