Judging Healthy Portion Sizes

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Brenda Thompson, registered dietitian and owner of Life Skills Nutrition. This next segment I am going to talk about healthy portion sizes. When you are writing in your food log, sometimes you don't always have the utensils to measure your food to determine the appropriate amount of calories that you are consuming. So I'm going to show you a few little tips to help you determine the appropriate portion sizes in various food groups. Over here, we'll start with the butter. A teaspoon of margarine is the size of the tip of your thumb to the first joint. So this is butter, it's about one teaspoon. Three ounces of meat is about the size of a deck of cards or about the palm of a woman's hand. The palm of a woman's hand can also be about four ounces such as mine. That would be about four ounces, this piece of chicken is about three. This one half cup of pasta is about the size of a tennis ball. This is an example of a half a cup of pasta. One half of a medium bagel is about the size of a hockey puck. An ounce and half of cheese is about the size of three dominoes. This is an example of one ounce of cheese. Two tablespoons of peanut butter is the size of a ping pong ball. This is approximately two tablespoons, and this is an organic peanut butter so it spread a little bit. One half cup of vegetables is about the size of a light bulb, as you would see here. So these are some tips that you can take with you when you are dining out or you do not have the appropriate measuring utensils that you might need when you are writing in your food log. "