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One of the things that struck me when I first came to Japan was that portion size of food and drinks is much, much smaller than that in America. At first I didn’t like this so much, especially at set course meals since the food would often not be enough for a full meal. Now though, I’ve grown an appreciation for the small portions.

What made me aware of this difference again was when I went to see Spiderman 3 at the theater and my friend and I got a large popcorn and drink. She, being Japanese, kept remarking about how she couldn’t believe how large the popcorn was. This was humorous to me since the same size popcorn would probably amount to a “small” size in America. The “large” drink would have also probably only amounted to a “small” size in America.

It’s interesting how perceptions about size vary so much. In a way though, I’m glad that Japan is limited in this manner. Because, to be honest, if I go to a movie theater in America, do I really need to get that super large bucket of popcorn and eat it all? Of course, you might say, I could just buy the smallest size and deal with it that way. But, this is where  psychology comes in, I think.

For one, if the largest size is small to begin with, then even if I wanted more, I wouldn’t be able to get it. This is very important in eating since if the options are scaled so that there are many more larger sizes than what you are able to eat, there’s a strong possibility that you’ll err on the side of eating too much. In Japan, since the sizes are all small, I’ll most likely err on the side of eating too little.

In addition, what is eating “just the right amount”? I’ve read studies that show that what we consider to be eating “just the right amount” of food is often affected by factors like size of plate, amount of food given preliminarily, etc. They’ve shown quite a few times that we base our appetite on how much food is actually put in front of us. So, if a large amount is put in front of us, like at an American restaurant, we’ll work to finish it all, even if we would have been perfectly satisfied having a smaller portion placed before us.

Other simple things like smaller plates trick us into thinking we’re eating more food and makes us feel “full” when in fact, it’s simply a matter of visual perception. For this reason, having a smaller box of popcorn is fine by me because it means I’ll eat a smaller amount of food and still feel the same amount of fullness as I do when I am presented with a large box at an American theater.

Additionally, American price schemes seem to be oriented towards the largest size available. For example, you’ll notice that the largest drink has the cheapest price per ounce of all the drinks or that the largest pizza has the cheapest price per square inch out of all the pizzas.

This is not true in Japan. Many months ago when I was looking at a Pizza Hut menu that was put in my mailbox, I calculated the price per square inch for the different sizes of pizza they had, mainly between “medium” and “large”. In America, the large is always, without question, much cheaper per square inch than any of the other sizes. For this reason, when I’m in America, I always order a large, even if I don’t intend to eat it all, I can either eat the rest the next day or offer it to someone else.

However, I was quite surprised when I calculated the price per square inch of the different pizza sizes for this Japanese Pizza Hut and discovered that price per square inch was basically the same across all sizes. This means that the only factor in deciding which size to get is really how much you want to eat since buying a larger size will not make the price per square inch cheaper as it does in America. Why this difference in pricing schemes exists, I’m unsure.

The last thing that impacts me regularly are drinks in vending machines, etc. In Japan, they have a size that is about 8-9 ounces in a can. I actually like this a lot since most of the time, I don’t want a 20 ounce drink which is what is usually the only size available in America. Now, again, you could say that I could just drink half of the 20 ounce drink and save it for later, but again, this never happens. I just continue to drink it until it runs out since my mind usually goes on autopilot. I don’t want to have to watch every drink I take to see how much I’ve drunk and whether I’ve hit the limit yet or not.

For this reason, it’s very convenient to just buy that small size drink and not worry about it. Often, the small size is the only size available in the vending machines. I’ve noticed in the United States that more and more vending machines that dispense cans are being replaced with vending machines that vend only 20 ounce bottles. Again, America is skewed towards consuming more.

Considering the fact that Japan offers smaller portion sizes, has equal economic incentive for each size and offers smaller drink sizes, it’s no wonder that Japanese people consume fewer calories than Americans. To be honest, I’m not complaining about these differences in Japan either because in America, I really don’t need those extra ounces of drink or those extra grams of meat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 9:45 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.