Well, the Cheesecake Factory is a bit of an outlying case -- those portions are ridiculous even by American standards. But as an Australian living in the US I agree with you -- I find it hard just to get a normally-sized meal for breakfast or lunch.
In Australia, if you order a ham and cheese sandwich, you get ham and cheese. In America if you order a ham and cheese sandwich you get a huge stack of ham, a bit of cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles (!?), maybe some sprouts, mayo and a bright yellow mustard-like substance. If I tell them I just want ham and cheese they look at me like I'm crazy (and I am, cuz I'll be paying about six bucks for this sandwich anyway).
On the other hand, last I heard Australian rates of obesity have overtaken US rates. On the other other hand, Australia probably has more of the slightly-fat people (ordinary folks with big beer guts) and fewer of the ridiculously-fat people (acres of waddling flesh or too-fat-to-walk electric wheelchair folks).
"Well, the Cheesecake Factory is a bit of an outlying case ..."
I'm not sure about that. Cheesecake Factory, Claim Jumper, you name it.
Even the fast casual restaurants like Chipotle. They tout the "freshness" of their ingredients–despite the fact their burritos weight as much as my laptop.
Of course, every restaurant now is on the "hamburger slider" craze ... even though the slider is probably the size a normal hamburger should be.
Don't even get me started on the Midwest. When I first started visiting Oklahoma regularly, I was a little shocked. You'd almost think there was a state law that every restaurant had to be a buffet.
I've also found that Americans like to lather sauce over everything, which begs the question of if they'd realize if we replaced all their meat with soy protein. This may be part of the diet problem.
In Canada we have ranch sauce, we have mayo, but it wasn't until I got to the US that I started seeing these things going on everything under the sun, in gigantic quantities.
Why have the ham sandwich if all you'll be tasting is the mayo?
In Australia, if you order a ham and cheese sandwich, you get ham and cheese. In America if you order a ham and cheese sandwich you get a huge stack of ham, a bit of cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles (!?), maybe some sprouts, mayo and a bright yellow mustard-like substance. If I tell them I just want ham and cheese they look at me like I'm crazy (and I am, cuz I'll be paying about six bucks for this sandwich anyway).
On the other hand, last I heard Australian rates of obesity have overtaken US rates. On the other other hand, Australia probably has more of the slightly-fat people (ordinary folks with big beer guts) and fewer of the ridiculously-fat people (acres of waddling flesh or too-fat-to-walk electric wheelchair folks).