Big is what we want when it comes to food and drink. We are eating from plates as big as bicycle wheels. We overeat because there is too much food on the plate. When we are offered "all we can eat," we go for it whole hog. When faced with an expansive buffet, the mountain of food we heap on our plates is enough to feed a small family in Tibet for a week.

We go to the movies and buy popcorn in a container that could double as a trash can. A pancake is as large as a full moon. A six-ounce "small" drink has grown to 64-ounces -- enough to fill a small wading pool. A single sandwich is stacked as high as the New York telephone directory. A bowl of pasta could be used as a bath for the baby. A "decent-" sized serving of mashed potatoes is one that has a crater of gravy deep enough to nestle in both buttocks. A serving of fish in a restaurant can cost more than the monthly utilities bill. A steak can weigh as much as 24 ounces. It is so huge you could sit on one end of it and carve it from the other. Big, of course, is the natural swing away from small. Small was a fad (mercifully now faded) during which vegetables were miniaturized. Suddenly we were confronted with one-bite cauliflowers, one-chew artichokes. Turnips, once as large as a pumpkin, shrank to the size of a green grape (seedless); eggplants dwindled to the contour of an index finger, and zucchini grew so small it appeared for a while as though it would disappear entirely or simply be painted on the plate as part of the pattern.

Part of the problem is that we are deluding ourselves. We have come to believe that fat-free means it is not fattening, and eating low-fat food has become an invitation to gobble up unlimited quantities.

We need a college degree to figure out what exactly constitutes a serving (so, for instance, one serving of pasta is 2 uncooked ounces -- but the usual quantity to eat is 8 ounces, or 800 calories). The sauce is extra. The Morton's of Chicago steak house chain considers a single serving to be one pound of potatoes. Add a Chug-a-Can Wide Mouth Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink or a Mega Mouth Slam can and what you've got is a mighty lot of wide bodies greedily guzzling gargantuan gulps of goo that's not at all good for you. The idea of "eat it because it is good for you" has given way to "eat it, it's in front of you."