No matter what they say, size does matter...

The new sizes of coffee at Starbucks got me thinking about the two related problems that we have in the US in regarding dietary consumption: we eat unhealthy foods and we eat too much of them. That's right, we have the perfect storm of poor nutrition quality in obscene stomach-stretching quantities. Consumers are really bad at knowing when we're full and judging how much we've eaten (let alone how healthy something is). And we as marketers take full advantage of this. We realize that we can increase sales not only by having you consume more often, but also by having you consume more in each sitting.

We use contextual information to make our judgments of how much we're supposed to eat. The amount of popcorn we eat at a movie is dependent upon the size of the container that we are given before we enter the theater. If we have a soup bowl fill up secretly from the bottom while you're consuming it, you'll eat more because you judge how much soup to drink by the progress you've made down the bowl. We judge how big our portions should be by how much of the dinner plate it fills up - and plates have been increasing in diameter (from 8.5" in 1960 to 10" in 1970 to 12" today).  We decide how much popcorn to eat at movies by the size of the container we are given.We know we should stop eating as we get to the bottom of our bag of chips, so we'll eat more if we eat out of a container where we don't touch the sides. We'll drink more if we drink from a larger straw (thanks McDonald's!) or a beer can with a wider opening (thanks Coors!).

Marketers also know that bad foods are often yummy and that we are extremely bad about tracking where our calories come from. Yes, we might expect that one fast food meal may contain almost our entire recommended daily intake of calories and fat. But would you expect that a Venti Doubly Chocolate Chip Frappuccino Blended Beverage would have 800 calories and 25 grams of fat? That is 40% of your daily calorie requirement and 38% of your daily recommended daily fat intake! No wonder there is a Starbucks on every corner - and thank goodness they have drive thrus. We wouldn't want to burn any of those calories by having to get out of the car and walking to the counter!