Portion Plate Review – 8 Things You Need to Know

During your health journey, you’ve likely come across the Portion Plate. You might be surprised to find that using a Portion Plate for weight loss is easy. It lets you portion food without the hassle of precise measuring, and it provides you with healthy serving sizes of the foods you need. Can a plate with portion sizes help you lose more weight?

Let us look at the science behind a Portion Plate diet and see if it matches your lifestyle and needs.

What is a Portion Plate?

Portion plates provide portion control for adults by giving visual clues to the serving size of foods on the dish itself. A healthy Portion Plate can help prevent you from entering into a calorie surplus, or limit your intake of particular food groups, depending on the plate design. Why would the Portion Plate size matter, and how can it help your dietary needs?

• The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition – In recent decades, serving sizes in commercially available food products have increased. Those increases are part of the emerging worldwide obesity issue. Part of the issue could be what people consider a “normal” serving of foods. 

A 2018 article discusses results found across three experiments involving serving size, where participants ate either larger or smaller servings of food. The participants selected serving sizes and later reported on their preferred “ideal” portion size. Those who consumed smaller servings believed that it was a “normal” sized portion, and they tended to prefer a smaller “ideal” serving. 

That demonstrates a potential benefit of a portion meal plate. One of the ideas behind a Portion Plate adults and kids use is that it can help retrain people to gain satiety from the serving sizes the dish provides.

• Marketing Science – Marketing studies data indicates that Portion Plate size can promote healthier eating habits. Examining “nudges” might help understand the research. One definition of nudges defines it as a subtle environmental change in a food distribution setting, designed to make a healthy choice the easy choice. 

A 2019 meta-analysis examined seven healthy eating nudges. Nudges fell into affectively oriented, behavioral oriented, or cognitively oriented groups. A portion control plate would fall into the behavioral-oriented nudges category. The data demonstrated that switching from descriptive nutrition labeling to dish and portion size changes could improve intervention effectiveness by 14-times in cafeteria settings. 

Another observation from the meta-analysis was that behavioral interventions were more effective at reducing unhealthy eating than increasing healthy eating habits or reducing total food intake. That could indicate the effectiveness of an adult Portion Plate in weight loss settings.

• Physiology & Behaviour – Another way to view portion control for adults is through the Portion-Size Effect (PSE). The PSE refers to how people will eat more when served with larger food portion sizes. 

A 2015 article examined some of the potential mechanisms behind PSE to determine what affects our judgment of portion size. One mechanism was appropriateness, where people see the portion served as appropriate in size. Another mechanism was fractional portions, describing serving sizes thought to be correct, just not for the individual eating. Other mechanisms examined include visual cues like the “see-food diet” (If I see food, I eat it) and bite-size with children. 

The article concluded that none of the mechanisms could fully explain PSE. What do these results mean concerning a plate with portion sizes? The Portion Plate adults or children would eat from can offer consistent serving sizes. Healthy serving sizes would address the PSE mechanisms examined in the article.

Portion Plate Competitors

What are Some Portion Plate Claims?

A portion meal plate is supposed to help with weight loss by preventing overconsumption of calories. Using one of these marked dishes purportedly helps to correct portion distortion. Users claim that matching Portion Plate size with visual images helps remind them to eat fruits and vegetables with each meal.

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What Are the Portion Plate Benefits?

Nutrients reviewed data in 2022 to better understand a portion meal plate and healthy dieting. It concludes that Portion Plates appear to be a promising tool, with studies showing improvements to healthy dietary behaviors, including increased nutritional knowledge.

The journal BMC Obesity stated in 2017 that a portion control plate could help reduce self-selected portion sizes. That could help establish consistent serving sizes and correct portion distortion often found in most American diets today.

Can simplicity make healthy eating effective? Cureus examined visual plate-related guidance to see if it helped when dining at home or in restaurants. It concluded that a simple guidance system might be more effective than none.

Can portion sizes still be effective when dieters serve themselves? The Journal of the Association for Consumer Research concludes that results from a meta-analysis indicate that plate size can affect the amount of food self-served and consumed.

Will portion size matter regarding food intake with weight balance and obesity in adults? The journal Etiology of Obesity suggests that large portions promote over-consumption. Using a Portion Plate for weight loss could prevent overeating during meals.

Obesity Research & Clinical Practice performed a meta-analysis and systematic review in 2021 regarding the impact of portion control plates. It states that portion control intervention significantly reduced body weight, waist circumference, BMI, and other health markers.

As mentioned previously, a Portion Plate diet can help with various food needs. The Patient Education and Counseling journal highlights that carb counting or a Portion Plate method (or using both) can improve health markers in patients monitoring their metabolic issues.

Are There Potential Portion Plate Side Effects?

Are there side effects to using a Portion Plate for weight loss or maintenance? No. You might experience hunger sensations when starting your dieting journey, but there are no other side effects.

Make sure the Portion Plate adults are using is not a child’s dish, and conversely, make sure that kids are not using an adult Portion Plate. Those with eating disorders should discuss Portion Plates with their healthcare team before starting a Portion Plate diet.

How to Use a Portion Plate: Directions

How do you set up a healthy Portion Plate? First, you need to identify what each section of the layout represents. Some dishware has words or images printed on the top that indicate what foods go where. Other Portion Plate diet dishes are not marked, so you need to determine what each section will hold.

Once you identify the sections, you can fill each with the proper food types. There is no need to measure or weigh food items (unless you want to, but that defeats one of the reasons to use a portion control plate in the first place). Fill each section with proper food types, covering the area but not heaping extra foods that spill over dividers or markings.

Where to Buy and the Cost

You can get a portion meal plate at many retail outlets that sell dishware, like Amazon or Walmart. Diet and health organizations may also offer a specialized portion diet plate for patients with dietary restrictions.

Retail prices can range as low as $3.99 for unmarked plates made from plastic to over $47 for a set of four porcelain Portion Plates. The layouts of these plates are often three or four sections. You can find an adult Portion Plate for just about any type of diet (like bariatric plates or layouts that match the myplate.com healthy serving sizes).

The Pros and Cons

Pros

• It can help you follow various dietary protocols, including the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans
• Allows you to portion food without the hassle of intricate measuring, making meals quicker and easier
• You can buy specialty Portion Plates from places like Amazon or Walmart to provide consistency

Cons

• Portion Plates must fit your specific dietary needs to be effective
• Smaller portion sizes can be difficult for some to adjust to
• Specialty Portion Plates can be expensive compared to other food dishes

What’s the Bottom Line on Portion Plate?

If you are looking to portion food without the hassle of measuring each item then a plate with portion sizes might be for you. Our research indicates that you can use a Portion Plate for weight loss or maintain healthy eating habits once you reach your target weight. Portion control for adults can be a simple way to incorporate weight loss without harsh dietary restrictions.

A healthy Portion Plate design is available at several retail outlets, including online at Amazon or in-store at places like Target or Walmart. You might have to adjust to using a portion control plate if you are used to eating large serving sizes, but there are no real side effects to using one.

A Portion Plate is definitely something worthwhile to try. It would work perfectly with the CDC-recognized healthy lifestyle program by Noom. The weight-loss program aims to teach users why they eat the way they do and changes they can make to naturally cut down on eating and calorie intake. This leads to lasting weight loss you can live with.

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