{"id":28582,"date":"2010-10-25T13:48:09","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T18:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=28582"},"modified":"2011-12-07T19:10:11","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T00:10:11","slug":"changing-soda-serving-sizes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/10\/25\/changing-soda-serving-sizes\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing Soda Serving Sizes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we&#8217;ve talked about before, one marketing strategy to get people to buy more stuff is to manipulate sizes. In the case of clothing, companies often use &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/10\/06\/vanity-sizing\/\">vanity sizing<\/a>,&#8221; labeling clothes as a smaller size than they really are. Food serving sizes have followed a form of vanity sizing of their own, with portions getting larger over time. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/sylvar\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Ostrowsky<\/a> sent in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sylvar\/sets\/72157625108936801\/detail\/\" target=\"_blank\">great example of changing norms<\/a> of consumption, highlighting the enormous increase in what is considered a standard serving of soda.<\/p>\n<p>In this 1950s ad for soda, the text proudly proclaims that a 12-oz. can is &#8220;king-size,&#8221; and includes 2 full servings:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/10\/soda1.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28583 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/10\/soda1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Compare it to this sign at Long John Silver&#8217;s, where the smallest size is 20 oz., and a 32-oz. medium soda, presented as the default size, is nearly 3 times as large as the 1950s king-size double serving (though, as a reader pointed out and I didn&#8217;t think to mention, we do have to make some allowance for ice in the cup):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/10\/soda2.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28584 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/10\/soda2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The gas station nearest me used to have fountain drink cups that started at 20 oz. I noticed recently they&#8217;ve completely dropped that size; the smallest cup you can now buy is 32 oz. The largest is a whopping 64 oz. I am actually curious how a person gets it home in their car, as I don&#8217;t see how it would fit in a standard cup holder. Perhaps you buckle it into an empty seat?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the larger the default size, the more product a company sells. For other examples of the push to increase portions or serving sizes, see Lisa&#8217;s post on <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/09\/06\/capitalism-and-instructions-for-use\/\" target=\"_blank\">manufacturers&#8217; instructions for use<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we&#8217;ve talked about before, one marketing strategy to get people to buy more stuff is to manipulate sizes. In the case of clothing, companies often use &#8220;vanity sizing,&#8221; labeling clothes as a smaller size than they really are. Food serving sizes have followed a form of vanity sizing of their own, with portions getting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[229,98,2124,23705],"class_list":["post-28582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consumption","tag-capitalism","tag-foodagriculture","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28582"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28586,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28582\/revisions\/28586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}