Mar 04 2008
American Hamburgers - How Big Should They Be?
When I reached the Minneapolis-St.Paul airport I had been traveling for hours and was really hungry. I went into a restaurant, scanned the menu, and asked the server, “How big is the hamburger?”
“It’s the standard half-pound size,” he answered, making a large circle with his hands.
Hamburgers are getting bigger and bigger. Janet Raloff writes about portion sizes in her article, “Dietary Inflation,” published on the Science News Web site. Raloff cites a University of North Carolina study of eating habits and portions. In the 1970s a typical hamburger was 5.7 ounces. In the 1990s this size had grown to seven ounces. Now, many restaurants are serving half-pound burgers and a few are serving one-pounders.