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amount of food people eat is largely determined by what is put in front oft hem or by the size of individual portions of food that a re sold in stores. So, for example, if the question is how much yogurt a p erson will eat, the answer is I ikely deter-mined by the size of the yogurt container. People do not tend to eat, say, one and a half individual-serving containers of yogurt-rather, they tend to eat however much yogurt is in a single container.

Rozin and colleagues explored this question by going to supermarkets in France and the United States and measuring the portion sizes. Yogurt containers in the United States are about 80% bigger than they are in France, and a variety of other foods sold in individual servings, such as chocolate bars, soft drinks, and lasagna, are also larger. Even fruit is larger in the United States than it is in France! Also, food that is served in international chain restaurants varies in portion size. A medium order of french fries at McDonald's in the United States contains about 70% more fries than an order in France. Chic.ken McNuggets are the same size in both countries, suggest-ing that this product is shipped internationally; however, a grilled chicken sandwich is bigger in the United States than in France. Rozin and colleagues suggest that this is because the grilled chicken is made from ad istinct part of the chicken and that chickens are also bigger in the United States than they are in France! Furthermore, Rozin and colleagues found that the quantities of ingredients specified in cookbooks are also larger in the United States than in France. Americans consume more calories than the French precisely because the cultural norms for portion size are larger for Americans. Rozin and colleagues argue that this excess caloric consumption is likely one key factor behind the higher obesity rates and coronary heart disease rates in the United States.

In many ways, the large portion sizes in the United States and elsewhere are the product of a fairly re cent cultural evolution. Take the example of coffee. In 1971 Starbucks started selling Italian-style coffee products to Americans. Recognizing at the time that Americans prefer I arge servings, they created a I arger 12-ounce cup (called tall) which people could choose if the standard 8-ounce Italian size (called short) wasn't sufficient. Soon, however, in response to consumer demand, Starbucks created an even larger 16-ounce size. Because the English word "tall" was already taken, they went with an Italian word and called this size grrmde. But over time this wasn't big enough to satisfy people's de sires either, so they created an even I arger 20-ounce size, which some clever marketing whiz called venti (Italian for "twenty"). Alas, this too didn't prove large enough, and in 2011 Starbucks created a 31-ounce size for their cold drinks c ailed trenti ( Italian for" thirty"). Could the Starbucks quaranta ("forty'') be next?

Sadly for our own health, Starbucks has been the norm rather than the exception. Portion sizes have been increasing for virtually all kinds of food in the United States, with portions at fast food chains now being two to five times larger than when they were first introduced (Young &Nestle, 2007), and Americans are estimated to be