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08.16.2006

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For more Hartman Group articles on OBESITY, click here...

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The Challenges Of Portion Control

Without question, portion size is a crucial element in the rhetoric of weight management or weight loss strategies. Consumers cite inappropriate or uncontrollable portion sizing as a primary hurdle to proper eating habits, as well as a more general cause of being overweight or obese. Not surprisingly, consumers are also quick to suggest that the reigning in of portion sizes is the cornerstone of any successful weight management strategy. Just over half (56%) of those who have dieted to lose weight say they adjusted portion sizes as part of their most recent dieting strategy. And as one consumer put it most succinctly, "I think portions are my biggest problem with eating."

Yet, while portion size is surely a top-of-mind issue for many, the actual activity of regulating portion sizes proves significantly more challenging. To this end, our research identified five important barriers to effective portion sizing strategies:

Lack of Cultural Consensus on Appropriate Portion Size

At the broadest everyday level, we find little consumer agreement regarding appropriate portion sizes for a variety of food. While we find that most consumers will initially describe an appropriate portion size as "a serving," there is significant variation in the actual volume comprising this serving. In the case of meat, for example, we found that consumer perceptions of what constituted a "normal serving" varied from "several" to as many as 17 ounces. The notable exception here occurs among a small percentage of consumers with either core wellness orientations or significant and longstanding participation in targeted weight management programs. Here we find a stronger consensus more in line with the guidelines common to nutrition sciences.

Calculating Portion Sizes is Work

Because effective portion sizing is not regulated by a wider cultural understanding of what constitutes an appropriate size, effective portion control requires significant, ongoing effort from the consumer. When cooking from scratch, many complain that the work of weighing and measuring, in addition to occasionally consulting charts, adds significant time to meal preparation activities. When preparing packaged food products from boxes, cans, bags, jars, etc., consumers find it challenging to calculate appropriate portion sizes from the information provided in nutritional and labeling information. Overall, among consumers increasingly plagued by time famine, these activities (weighing, measuring, calculating, visualizing, etc.) frequently fall by the wayside during periods of duress.

Packaged Meals at Odds with Notions of Healthy

In an effort to reduce the work and confusion of effective portion sizing strategies, some prefer to "outsource" this work by relying on packaged meals (e.g., Healthy Choice, Smart Ones), which offer pre-selected portions. While we find that consumers exhibit a strong amount of trust that the portion sizes offered by such meals are generally appropriate, we also find that for many, especially among core and mid-level wellness consumers, these meals are at odds with their understandings of "healthy" eating.

Specifically, home-cooked or freshly prepared foods appear healthier than prepackaged foods by tapping into important dimensions such as "balance," "authenticity" and "freshness." As a result, we find that for many consumers the benefits of convenient, effective portion control are outweighed by negative health perceptions.

Rules of Thumb Aren't Generalizable

The only predominant theme regarding appropriate portion sizes centers around what we call the "fist model." That is, some consumers report a shared belief that an appropriate portion size is "about the size of my fist" or "about a handful." Separate from the question of whether or not this even represents an appropriate portion size in any objective sense, we find fundamental problems with this approach. Namely, implementation proves all but impossible, as this measurement is not generalizable across food categories. While a fist might make an appropriate unit of measurement for rice or pasta, it fails when applied to bread, pizza, salads, etc.

The Practice of Strict Portion Control Sucks the Life Out of Eating

The simple fact is that many individuals enjoy eating. They buy cookbooks, take eating vacations, subscribe to food magazines, talk food with friends and meet the chefs at their favorite restaurants. These people are highly unlikely to reduce the act of eating to the sterility of a lab experiment. True, measuring ingredients with a chemist's precision is often part of the process of creating a gourmet meal, but this attention to detail does not generally extend to the eating of a gourmet meal.

A quarter to a third of those dieting to lose weight have never followed or even considered trying a formal weight loss plan, such as Weight Watchers or Atkins. Moreover, those who do are significantly less likely to stick with their diets, citing boredom, distaste, inconvenience and other reasons. Successful marketing of diet plans requires more than touting efficacy. Attention must also be paid to pragmatic approaches to dieting (e.g., strategies for weathering the holidays, dining out,and other occasions) that go beyond offering "tips" on how to diet under adverse conditions. In other words, a consumer-centric plan would permit dieters to stray guilt-free while providing a mechanism or set of steps to get the dieter "back on track."

Implications

The concept of moderation is one that resonates with consumers of all weight segments.Understanding that many consumers have incorporated moderation as part of their lifestyle is key to appropriately positioning products as items consumers can use over the long term. While there are occasions when consumers are more interested in short-term solutions, successful products will become part of the consumer's moderation "toolkit".

Marketers too often target consumers with command and control narratives ("Lose weight now!" "Remove unwanted inches from your waistline") rather than adopting commiseration narratives ("We used to be so thin," "Remember when we fit into those size 6 jeans?"). Successful commiseration narratives that adopt the language and cadence of the consumer's informal social network will speak to the consumer more as a friend and less as a distant, belligerent authority.

Marketers interested in connecting their products, services or brands with weight management strategies would be advised to align their messages/products as closely as possible to notions of food as crucial elements of meals consumed at tables, rather than individual food items consumed in isolation.

I could eat the whole box...

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