The surprising reason restaurant portions are so big.

Have you noticed the huge sizes of restaurant portions? It is not your imagination. Want proof? Restaurant bowls, plates, and glasses are larger to hold these increased portions. Compare them to the size of your dishes at home. So why are we eating such big portions today? The answer, oddly enough, is the diminished value of the American dollar -- inflation. Here's how it happened. Restaurant overhead costs like labor, electricity and real estate have soared in recent decades. In order to keep up, restaurant owners have been forced to raise their prices. But raising prices is bad for business. To make this more palatable, they have increased their portions. Fortunately for them, wholesale food prices have not increased as much, thanks to the ever-improving productivity of American farms and government subsidies for farming. In fact, some journalists say restaurateurs have been able to use larger food portions as a reason to disproportionately increase menu prices. Portions increased and we happily went along for the ride. Now we have bigger appetites and bigger bellies, and the up-sizing trend continues. In fact while up-sizing your meal seems economical, what you are actually doing is paying yet more for calories you do not need.