Handy Guide to Calorie-based Serving Sizes
If you know where to look, there are some helpful visual guides that can help you "eyeball" serving sizes of various foods.
Here are some examples.
120 Calories
The British National Health Service (NHS) has an on-line gallery of 120 Calorie food items.Shown here (all 120 Calories): Half a bagel (45g), 4 pieces chocolate (25g), Sugar-free muesli (15g or 1 tbsp) and a 125g pot of low-fat yoghurt.

200 Calories
WiseGeek have a great selection of foods - all in 200 Calorie portions.Shown here (all 200 Calories): 145g Cooked Pasta, 28g Butter, 588g Broccoli (that's 1.3 pounds!)

300+ Calories
Here on Diet Blog some time ago, we listed 300+ Calorie meals.Shown here: Chicken Salad and crackers (350 Calories), Cup of cooked oatmeal, banana, cup of fruit (325 Calories), Baked potato, melon, salsa (305 Calories).

Healthy Snacks
Another visual guide - this one lists some good ideas for healthy snacks. The Calorie levels were carefully calculated to ensure accuracy.Shown here: 215g grapes (148 Calories), 20 almonds (139 Calories), 2 Cups air-popped pop-corn (62 Calories).

More like this in Food · Jul 27, 2007
What excellent resources! Seeing those images really makes it visually clear how 'super sized' most restaurant portions are today...
ReplyThis *is* actually kind of cool. It's a resource that I will refer people to in the future for sure.
ReplyThis is why I love the way I eat...lots of foods like broccoli, where you'd have to eat 2 lbs of it to get 200 calories. I don't usually measure my veggie servings for that reason...it's not like you can easily overdo it. Unlike, say, the butter. That's not a whole lot of butter for 200 calories. Paula Deen would be horrified! You need at LEAST a stick of it in order for anything to taste good :)
ReplyThank you for these visuals! I am new to your site. I found you from Forbes best of the web article. I look forward to reading more.
ReplySpectra's right about not having to measure veggie portions. But if you eyeball much else, you're very liable to eat too much, at least in my experience.
ReplyRight Debbie...I measure portion sizes of pretty much everything else, but yeah...if you have to eat a kilo and a half of celery to get 200 calories, it's very hard to overdo it! Oh, another thing...I had no idea that balsamic vinegar had that many calories! Not like I eat the stuff plain or anything.
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