200-Calorie Food Gallery

When I suggested a few months ago that eating pre-packaged food helped me to learn about portion sizing and control, I caught some heat for eating such unhealthy, sodium-ladened food. Still, it was useful in teaching myself to gauge healthy portion sizes; I still recommend it for someone just learning to restrict their calories.

But good golly I wish I had seen this genius gallery on Wisegeek.com a few months ago, where 200-calorie portions of food are photographed on the same plate, highlighting the sometimes surprising disparity in volume between different foods. As seen above, 200 calories gets you a whole mess of celery, half a Jack-in-the-Box cheeseburger, or a tiny hunk of butter. (The worst for me was the hunk of cheddar cheese, which I’ve been known to plow through at breakneck speed—and I thought it was the crackers I was eating it on that were bad!)

What Does 200 Calories Look Like? [Wisegeek via Digg]