Weren't we conditioned back in the old days to finish all your food before you could go out and play and because there were staving people in Africa?

People in Africa are still being staved.

Cyril Smith was a circus freak show in the 1970s. Nowadays there are 10 of him on every flight, and you can barely get round supermarkets for all the blobboes on scooters pushing a hundredweight of pizza and Coke.

Husband and I were in Chicago two weekends ago. I ordered a sandwich... the thing was MASSIVE. It was my main course, and my husband and I split the leftovers for lunch the next day. One "main course" made 3 meals, in the end.

(We also had a starter, but even if we hadn't, I would have managed, at most, half that sandwich.)

You have to try much harder. You can't just go and give up at the starter

Thats very true.

Yes. And the truth is that is why I'll eat everything on my plate at a restaurant that has serving sizes twice what it should be. I feel more guilty about wasting food than I do about over eating. Although eating what I don't need and throwing it out are both wasting it.

Food has just become too cheap, too processed and too easy in many Western countries. I think the government could play a bigger role in regulating the advertising and the marketing of certain foods.

Its the perverts I feel sorry for, sure they're easier to catch but who wants to fiddle a fatty?

Restaurants serve huge portions because people don't send food back.

Too many people go into restaurants with the expectation that they're going to get a huge dinner AND tomorrow's lunch out of it. If people simply sent back excess food, restaurants would stop serving it.

Asking for a doggy bag is really inexcusable, especially when the doggy is you.

Can't believe you mentioned Malta and that kid with the ridiculously long username hasn't posted something in the thread.

The restaurants want to maximise revenue so they oversell on quantity. Not unlike British supermarkets. The impetus is to sell larger quantities and get the consumer to take personal responsibility for not over consuming. Fine in theory, not so fine when the health service gets the enormous bill for obesity related problems.

I'm all for a rule like what's in parts of the US, where restaurants have to have the calorie content on the menu. My parents were in NYC recently and couldn't bring themselves to order meals listed at 2000 calories, and when they did, they only ate half, and brought the other half back to the hotel to have as leftovers.

I think a combination of that, and generally restaurants selling smaller portions, would be great to help combat obesity...

Yes. They do that at (ahem) McDonalds in the UK and I have modified my choices on more than one occasion.

Yep, they do in Canada as well. The handful of times I've been there I've chosen different things based on that number staring me in the face... particularly around fries as a side!