Portion sizes

It has been a busy month but I want to go back to one of Mark's posts.  Mark states:

There are certainly things here that would seem strange here (make sure to get two pats of butter every day), but much of advice -- not overeating, watching salt, sugar and fat, satisfying cravings in moderation -- still seems fairly sound.
 

Even today, dietary guidelines suggest getting some fat in your diet.  So how much butter is in a pat of butter? 

20 calories in 1 small pat of salted/unsalted butter (0.1 oz or 3g)
 

For a 2000 calories diet, that is 2% of your daily energy intake.  Now if you consider what was easy to preserve and likely to be widely available in 1950, this makes sense.  Today we'd probably substitute nuts for the butter.  But it would be challenging to find a nutritionist who had trouble with a garnish that was about 4-6 grams of fat/day. 

What is more remarkable, to me, is how much things like meat serving sizes fit with modern dietary approaches.  But I would be surprised if this advice was not very effective at weight control even today.