Coming into the holiday season, many people may wonder—or worry—about how much they are eating. This may raise questions about what is a serving size. However the question of “what is a serving size?” is not quite as simple as you might think. This is because there are actually several food guidelines, each with little differences in serving size. In fact, the most recent US food guideline – MyPlate – actually does not use serving sizes per se, but only gives overall amounts that should be eaten of each group each day. This blog will review the most common serving sizes based on the Food Guide Pyramid and then the current recommendations per day based on MyPlate.

​Before getting to the common serving sizes, another place you find serving sizes is on food labels, however the serving size may not be the same as food guidelines. Food labels are required to list a serving size and the number of servings per container. These serving sizes are based on information taken from national surveys of what is usually eaten of a certain food at a sitting. The key word here is based on this reference amount because a food label may have a serving size as little as 50% or as great as 200% of this reference amount.