A Note on Portion Sizes

It occurred to me today as I was packing Princess’s lunch that a note on portion sizes may be in order.

Princess is very petite, and very young. She is obviously not eating a portion the size of an adult. When I post the lunchbox report in the sidebar, it frequently looks like a lot of food, but there is often just a little bit of a lot of things. My personal philosophy is that variety is better than volume-she is more likely to eat a sampling of things than one big entree.

Here are some examples of the types of portion sizes I send in:

• Yogurt–I only send in about half of an 8 oz container
• Fresh Veggies–5 or 6 mini carrots, 3 or 4 cauliflower/brocolli spears etc.
• Pickles-either 3 or 4 “Hamburger Dill” slices, or one spear cut into 3 or 4 pieces
• Crackers (such as saltines)-approx 4 crackers
• Grapes-8 or 9 grapes (ie a very small handful)
• Canned Fruit-only what will fit very loosely in a 4oz gladware container (without juice) usually “precut” by me to make eating easier
• Marshmallows-for the Minis I sometimes send in a small handful, and sometimes only 5 or 6, depending on if their are any other sweets in the lunch.
• Cookies-one or two small homemade-again, depends on what else is included for sweets
• Sandwiches-I do usually send in a full sandwich-but I do not to the “deli” thing of loading it down with inches of meat. There usually are 1 or 2 slices of lunch meat. That is plenty.
• Burritos-a full one
• Leftovers-trail and error has taught me that she will usually only eat 1/2 to 1/3 of her little wide mouth thermos worth of any type of hot food I send in. So now that is all I send in. The one exception is tomato soup, which I usually fill almost full.

I hope that clarifies things for a few of you.

Everyone else, ignore it and move on to the next post!