Doyce is waxing lyrical over the Claim Jumper over on his blog. You can check out the cake he’s talking about (or one like it) at the restaurant link.
I’ve heard commentary that one reason Americans are getting so … well, round (or well-rounded) is because what we “expect” as a serving size keeps increasing. Really, the cost of the raw material for most restaurants is a fraction of what the real estate/capital costs/labor costs are, so it’s an easy “differentiator” for restaurants to simply feed you more food than you can possibly eat. They charge you a goodly amount, but you feel like you’ve gotten a bargain-fargain, and come back more for later. And all for a relatively trivial added cost.
Check out the “serving size” on most packaged/canned food. You look at it and say, “Hah! Are you kidding? That’s just an advertising ploy so that they can say the can has seven serving in it, when each serving is just a tiny, unsatisfying morsel.”
Try it again. Those serving sizes are set by the Feds. They’re set to a standard for each type of food, so that consumers can compare easily. And they’re based on serving size standards of four or five decades ago.
Yup. Once upon a time people ate only six or seven chips from a Doritos bag, not the whole bag all on their lonesome. That was the Depression Generation, folks — eat light, be thrifty, save for a rainy day.
I can’t say I mind having lived through an era of prolonged prosperity (even at its deepest recessions after WWII, the US has been doing better and living better than any previous generation, in aggregate). Heck, my own well-rounded shape shows how much I don’t mind it. But there have been “soft” costs, none softer than those love handles.