An Eastern professor said the key to solving the obesity epidemic is controlling portion size.

Jim Painter, a registered dietitian and the chairman of the family and consumer sciences office, said it is critical that people eat smaller portions if they want to beat the obesity epidemic.

“In my way of thinking, portions are important because if you think about what has changed in the past 20 years, the two main things are that portions are bigger and food is everywhere,” Painter said.

Painter has been featured on “The CBS Early Show” twice for his research on portion dieting.

He was featured in segments of “The CBS Early Show” in 2006 and Feb. 15.

Painter worked with Susan Koeppen, a health correspondent for “The CBS Early Show,” and conducted an experiment with ice cream that reinforced Painter’s position on food portion size.

The experiment included ten participants who were split up into two groups.

One group was provided with small cups, small spoons and a small scooper for ice cream whereas the other group was given larger bowls, spoons and a larger scooper.

Members of both groups said they felt full but the group with the larger utensils consumed about twice as many calories than the group with smaller utensils.

“We get fooled by portions with things we choose to eat with so if we eat out of something big we tend to eat more and if we eat out of something small we eat less,” Painter said during his segment on “The CBS Early Show.”

The ice cream experiment was featured on both of the occasions when Painter was on the show.

“We gave them a big list of different things we could do for the show and they just really liked the idea of the ice cream study so we did it again five years later,” Painter said. “I think it was great to be featured because I got to get the message of portion importance out to their audience size of a couple of million people.”

Painter said his research caught the attention of “The CBS Early Show” in December 2006 after one of his graduate students emailed them about Painter’s documentary “Portion Size Me.”

“Portion Size Me” is a 25-minute documentary following Aaron Grobengieser and Ellen Shike, two nutrition graduate students, who ate fast food in portions appropriate to their weight for 30 days. Both are now dieticians in Indiana.

Painter said he got the idea of “Portion Size Me” after watching the documentary “Super Size Me.”

“I had seen ‘Super Size Me’ while flying back from Europe and the goal in ‘Super Size Me’ was to shut down the industry which I thought was kind of a silly and not obtainable goal at all,” Painter said. “I wanted to prove to people that you can eat fast food and still be healthy with ‘Portion Size Me.'”

The food portions for the students to follow were determined by their weight with how many calories to consume a day.

The results of the documentary were that the students maintained their health and lost a few pounds because they were eating in accordance to their portion size.

Painter said he travels around the world to give different presentations about portion control and food health including New York, Berlin, London and Canada.

Painter said there are many principles that can change how you eat including size, shape, visual cues, visibility, convenience, journaling and form of the food.

“The reason I give presentations on a weekly basis all over the place is that it changes people’s lives and makes a difference because people actually change what they are doing for the better,” Painter said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or rjrodgers@eiu.edu.