This article references eating disorders.

First, they added calories to menus. Now they’re coming for portion sizes.

Between the constant stream of Ozempic-focused headlines, idealised beauty standards set and reinforced by social media and celebrities, and the never-ending reports about Britain’s so-called obesity crisis, there is no escaping the topic of bodyweight right now.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the body positivity movement has been dismantled altogether, and we have reverted back to ’90s diet culture, which was toxic then, and certainly has no place in 2025.

First, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government introduced legislation in 2021 which meant that businesses with over 250 employees – including restaurants, cafes and third-party food providers like Deliveroo and Just Eat – had to display calorie information on their menus, apps and food labels by law.

At the time, charities warned that such a move would encourage disordered thinking about eating and food, as well as hinder recovery. Three years on from the policy’s introduction, Beat says it has seen a sharp rise in reports about this measure.

But now, Naveed Sattar, the current government’s obesity mission chair and professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, is taking things one step further, by suggesting that both restaurants and supermarkets provide smaller food portions – specifically for women (oh, and short men).

In an article authored by Professor Sattar in The Lancet recently, the academic claimed that current portion sizes are “typically calibrated to the average energy requirements of an adult man,” therefore making them “oversized” for women.

This, per Sattar, combined with guilt over food waste and our love of a good bargain (because we are incentivised by ‘deals’ for larger meal options, naturally), all makes women more susceptible to obesity than their male counterparts, which he backed up with a global study from 2021, which found that (marginally) more women were obese than men.

And yet, the 2022 Health Survey for England, specifically, concluded that men (67%) were more likely than women (61%) to be overweight or obese.

Now, I am not trying to downplay the seriousness of public health. Experts recently warned that the number of children and teenagers with high blood pressure globally has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, and the latest government figures also reveal more than a quarter of children (26.8%) aged 2-15 in England are overweight or obese, which some studies show can be associated with negative public health outcomes.

What I am against, though, is bringing in gender specific rules around eating. Yes, Sattar did suggest that if this initiative were ever enforced, it should be optional – so, too, did he state that smaller portion sizes should be “priced fairly”. But not only do women know this likely will not be the case (we pay ‘pink tax’; we pay the same tuition fees as our male counterparts but are compensated disproportionately when we enter the workplace, etc.), I fail to see why smaller portion sizes need to be geared towards women at all. Why can’t it just be a standardised option for all adults?

And then there’s the human element of it all. Going to a restaurant is for many a treat – an experience to be savoured and enjoyed. You shouldn’t have to calorie-count and consider your plate size every time you go out.

It’s also become even more of a luxury with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. This rings true with a recent YouGov poll, which found that 38% dined out less often than they did a year ago. So it seems like more than just a leap to assume that restaurant dining, specifically, is behind this rise in obesity levels in Britain.