Research paper
Young LR, Nestle M. The contribution of expanding portion sizes to the US obesity epidemic. American Journal of Public Health. 2002;92(2):246-249. doi:10.2105/ajph.92.2.246. PMID: 11818300. PMCID: PMC1447051.
Why we cite it
Public health paper that documented, with specific measurements, how dramatically marketplace portion sizes had expanded beyond federal standards — and the measurements are the contribution (previously ”providing the empirical foundation for the entire portion size research field”, corrected 2026-09-02, card 6NM98H — a standing claim about a field, welded to the specific measurements that actually earn it). Published in the American Journal of Public Health, this paper didn’t just assert that portions had grown; Young and Nestle weighed actual marketplace foods and compared them to USDA/FDA standard serving sizes, finding that ”With the single exception of sliced white bread, all of the commonly available food portions we measured exceeded” the ”USDA and FDA standard portions” (corrected 2026-09-10 from ”most exceeded standards by factors of 2 to 8″, which is not the paper’s; its largest excess is cookies at 700%). The specific numbers: cookies 700% larger than the USDA standard, pasta servings 480% larger, muffins 333% larger. They also tracked the historical timeline, showing that portion expansion began in the 1970s, rose sharply in the 1980s, and ”continued in parallel with increasing body weights”, a parallel the authors caution ”could reflect some external factor” (corrected 2026-09-19: paralleled the rise in obesity rates dropped the caution that Extracted knowledge carries) The later reviews cpi02 (Hollands et al. 2015) and cpi04 (Zlatevska et al. 2014) quantified the behavioral effect of larger portions; this one documented the real-world scale of the expansion. `cpi02` cites it (its held reference list: ”Young L, Nestle M. The contribution of expanding portion sizes to the US obesity epidemic”); `cpi04`’s full text is not held, so whether it does is unchecked (corrected 2026-09-10 from ”the foundational ‘what happened’ evidence that the later meta-analyses … built upon”, an impact claim only half checkable here).
”Landmark” removed (2026-09-06, card E1AWST) — the last unsurveyable word in a section whose field-foundation claim was already corrected under 6NM98H. The measurements are the contribution, as this record already says.