Why are food portions getting smaller? Korea's 'eat less' trend explained

South Korea's retail and food industry is rolling out a wave of smaller-portioned products as a growing "eat less" trend takes hold amid high prices, rising single-person households and the mainstream adoption of obesity drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro.

Seven-Eleven recently launched a line of "one-hand" grab-and-go meal items, including a kimbap roll (maki), a chicken tenderloin wrap and a single boiled egg. The convenience store chain said it had taken note of rising demand for meal-replacement snacks. Protein drink sales at Seven-Eleven rose 82 percent in the January–October period compared with the same period last year, while boiled egg sales climbed 27 percent. Roasted sweet potato sales were up 23 percent, sandwiches 22 percent and burritos 17 percent.

GS25 and CU have also expanded their grab-and-go lineups. GS25 began selling four varieties of small-portioned "mini kimbap" on Oct. 21, surpassing 200,000 cumulative units sold in under two weeks. Sales of its single-serving mini pizza "GoPizza Grab" also rose 34.9 percent in the January–October period year-on-year. CU launched its "get Morning" series in January, a range of kimbap, sandwiches and porridge. The "get Morning mini kimbap" from that lineup had sold about 4.2 million units through Sunday.

Food manufacturers are also trimming portion sizes. CJ CheilJedang's "Hetbahn Soft Mini Rice," introduced in September, comes in at 110 grams — 20 grams less than the company's existing small-size product and roughly half the standard 210-gram serving. Namyang Dairy Products added an 80-gram option to its Bulgaris Greek yogurt line, which had previously centered on 150-gram and 400-gram sizes. It also released a 200-milliliter small-format version of its "French Cafe Devil's Temptation" canned coffee.

Global franchise KFC operates a small-portion menu called MIX'D, which sells items such as french fries, five nuggets and a single drumstick separately, with no burger included. "We diversified the menu to reflect the spread of 'snacking' consumption — where people enjoy food flexibly without drawing a hard line between a meal and a snack," a KFC official said.

Academics have also taken notice. At the "2027 Food and Dining Industry Outlook" conference held earlier this month at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul — organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation — Moon Jeong-hoon, a professor at Seoul National University's Food Business Lab in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, highlighted "eating less" as a key trend.

Big data analysis by Moon's research team found that the number of annual meals consumed by Koreans fell by 24.8 over the most recent year compared with the prior two-year average — equivalent to skipping more than two meals per month.

The trend is equally visible overseas, where obesity drugs arrived earlier than in Korea. JPMorgan projected that GLP-1 drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro will reduce annual global food and beverage industry sales by $30 billion to $55 billion between 2030 and 2034.

"High prices have pushed up the cost of products, but overall consumption is also falling, and retail strategies are shifting accordingly," an industry official said. "With one- and two-person households on the rise, more consumers will opt for small-format products that cover a single occasion rather than buying in bulk to stock up."