Portion Contortion

I’m sorry about the recent scarcity of Auntie’s Blog; unfortunately, I was struck down with the creeping crud that’s sweeping the southwestern states here in the US, and it nailed me for almost two weeks, which is pretty unusual. Needless to say, I look like I’ve been fighting typhoid…I glanced in the mirror yesterday and realized that in order to achieve truth in advertising, I was going to have to change my face cream from “Crème de La Mer™” to “Crème de La Cur.”

And away we go....


According to research by Mintel International, (See “Weighing Obesity” by William A. Roberts, Jr., in this month’s articles at Preparedfoods.com), portion control research continues to indicate that we are ever-increasingly influenced to make poor eating decisions by distorted food portions in packaged goods and restaurants.

A 2001 report in Food Quality and Preference reported that movie-goers with a one-pound bag of M&Ms™ would eat 112 candies versus 156 for movie watchers with a two pound bag. Curiously enough, an additional factor appeared to be color variety; if the study subjects were offered more colors, they ate more than if provided with only one or two colors of M&Ms™.

Another experiment indicated that when provided with a continuously refilled soup bowl (unknown to the customers), women would eat 30% more soup than they did if the bowl emptied normally, while men would overeat an additional 40 percent.

This also holds true for children. When served approximately double the proper portions, children would eat 25% more food; when they served themselves, they would eat about 25% less than those served a large portion. According to this study, repeated exposure to larger portions could have a long-term effect on children, creating “satiety deficits.” The study author recommended allowing children to self-serve, arguing that this may allow the child to more successfully regulate intake.

I know that at the Diner, we’ve highlighted several articles that recommend using various frozen meals for portion control (See The Diner’s Dim Sum section), in particular, Uncle Ben’s Rice Bowls. I also know that many busy moms buy Family Style frozen meals for the nights that they are too busy to cook. Me, I’m partial to the Banquet Crock Pot meals, particularly the Creamy Chicken With Pasta (Yum!!). The bag claims that it feeds a family of five, but I would suggest a salad or other veggie to go along with the meal for more balance. For $5.99, though, it’s a great and easy dinner, and if you are feeding five, it should do so without allowing anyone to overeat.

At the Diner, you can do a search for family-size meals and even sort them by the amount of calories per portion to assist you in regulating portion control for your family.

(note: Hot dog & gherkins photo, reproduced with permission, courtesy of: gallery.hd.org)

Pizza Performance

I thought I would invent a device that will save half of all American marriages from ending in divorce: it's going to be a sort of hat for women. It will be made up of a flashing red light (think the Fire Chief's car) that can be turned on and off by the wearer while in the presence of her husband, and a small sign in front that says "When the light is flashing, what I am saying is actually important!!"

Now, back to business:


In keeping with last week’s theme about the vast numbers of frozen meals consumed daily by Americans, I thought we should take a moment to honor the lowly frozen pizza, which has obviously taken us by storm. Interestingly, (to me), my personal favorite is nowhere to be seen within the list of the top seven best-selling pizzas. I’m a big California Pizza Kitchen fan, but obviously I’m in something of a minority. According to Information Resources, Inc., the top selling frozen pizzas from third-quarter 2005 were:

In seventh place, with sales of 12,088,134 pizzas for a total of $30,530,504 in sales, was “Tony’s," which is owned by Schwan's;

In sixth, with sales of 30,661,748 pizzas for a total of $34,615,968, is a name well known to everyone, Totino’s Party Pizza.

Fifth place was captured by none other than Freschetta, with $33,366,022 in sales for 6,684,022 pizzas, while Private Label pizzas (frozen pizzas made and sold by individual supermarket chains) came in fourth, nationwide, with a total of 22,944,764 pizzas sold for $41,062,192.

In third was none other than Red Baron, selling 16,738,261 pizzas for a breathtaking $57,310,508. Second place was scooped by Kraft’s Tombstone line, which 14,733,218 pizzas sold at a price of $51,303,688.

But it was Tombstone’s sibling, Kraft’s DiGiorno Pizza, that kicked butt and took names, and not by a small amount. Compared to the others, DiGiorno basically sold as much as Red Baron and Tombstone combined, with a whopping $100,823,000 in sales for 20,614,400 pizzas.

So, how many pizzas a day is that, you ask?

That equals 1,382,935 pizzas per day, seven days a week, at a cost of $3,877,910 per day.

That’s a lot of frozen pizzas.

Squirrel Photograph courtesy of scarysquirrelworld at scarysquirrel.org

Close Accounters of the Frozen Kind

My sister recently commented that if we outfitted vacuum cleaners with remote controls and flashing lights, no woman would ever push one again. (Wait for it….)

And now, back to business...

Information Resources Inc. recently released its third quarter 2005 sales figures for the food industry. Interestingly enough, frozen prepared foods are again making huge strides, continuing the march on domestic digestion.

Stouffer’s, of course, led the way, selling not only 7,692,472 family-style dinners (in other words, feeds more than one person), but a walloping 89,436,903 single-serve dinners and entrees. These figures include their normally successful Lean Cuisine branded lines, which have been huge favorites amongst people watching their weight, but it’s worthwhile to note that Healthy Choice (Con-Agra’s reduced-calorie/fat/carb brand) and Weight Watcher’s Smart Ones lines are both increasing in sales, while Lean Cuisine seems to be taking a hit, with sales declining between 20-30%, on average, over the same period last year.

And Swansons HungryMan dinners? The line that no one admits eating? Swansons not only sold more than ten million of these dinners in third-quarter 2005, but sales increased more than 20% over last year. These figures nearly match that of Marie Callendar’s, which sold slightly over 12 million dinners for $32 million-plus in sales.

Bertolli’s new Dinners for Two ingredient packages are making huge strides, selling more than 3 million units for the quarter for an 899% increase in sales over this period last year. As these dinners have been getting good reviews at the Icebox Diner, I can’t say I’m surprised. Another big mover is Contessa, with an increase in sales of more than 25% over last year, selling nearly 1.4 million ingredient packages to hungry families - which is pretty impressive for a line with only 18 different meals.

In total, just counting the top 5 brands in each category, American households purchased 26,762,460 “multi-serve” entrees or dinners, for a little over $151 million dollars in sales to feed their families. In the single-serve category, more than 211,492,605 entrees/dinners were purchased, with sales in excess of $400 million.

In other words – Americans buy and consume over 2.3 million “TV Dinners,” along with nearly 300,000 “family-style” frozen meals every single day.

Enjoy!!