The ‘clean plate’ mentality drives us to overeat?
news.vanderbilt.edu
news.vanderbilt.edu
This article reads to me like a PR piece for the (marketing) professor more than an honest showcasing of scientific findings: The results are very relatable and feel intuitively true so as a reader it's easy to pick it up as "ammunition" for future family dinner discussions and thus are also good for the media to publish. So there's no need for rigorous science. (I mean come on, "participants were asked to imagine eating a certain number of cookies (...) and then asked how much they wanted one more cookie.")
Because of this (and for other reasons) we never ever make our daughter clear her plate. If she says she’s full she can walk away. We also keep healthy snacks around the house (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, a very small amount of “junk” food) so she does “graze” throughout the day. But we don’t force food habits on her because I don’t want her growing up with a complex around food or her weight. It’s more important to me that she make healthy nutrition choices overall and keeps in touch with her body about when she’s hungry. I feel like pushing for a clean plate goes against that.
Parents don't like to see food wasted (it took money to buy and time to prepare and the alternatives aren't good for kids) but these rules were also on us: don't put an unreasonable amount of food on the kids' plates.
But it is important to realize that food that you force someone to eat after they feel properly full is worse than wasted. Not only have you already spent time and money to prepare it, which you won't get back, but you also just made their stomach ache. And you have taken whatever little agency they have as a kid - now they freaking don't even get to decide how hungry they are.
(This is not directed at you, as you seem to have a reasonable system in place. Your comment just seemed like a good place to plug this rant) :)
As I noted every decision is modulated by parental intervention — if a kid made an obvious mistake, possibly intervene early “are you sure you want six bao? Just take a couple — you can always have more” or late “ok, but see the problem? Next time let’s be more careful.”
Yeah, parenting is non-algorithmic, and once (if?) you get good at it it’s too late to do it again.
Arguably multi-generational households with grandparents on hand are able to take advantage of this. This is perhaps not as useful as it was centuries ago, due to how fast society and the situations a family might face have shifted.
Not everybody eats under those conditions. When I was a kid my parents would always put food on my plate, and I was expected to eat it all. They usually put too much, because nobody wants to be the parent who starves their kid. Similarly, restaurants always tend to err on the side of serving too much rather than too little, as do family gatherings or dinner parties where the guests do not serve themselves.
At restaurants, we would usually skimp on appetizers and other “fluff” before the main course, which I have found makes the total amount of food not overly large.
In reality I guess you had unusual parents who were good at telling how much you needed, so you didn't avoid this problem in any way at all, you were just not subject to it.
Are Americans incapable of doing this?
Having said that, as a kid and teenager I always felt that I could it a bigger portion so always took "too much", and finishing it once I was no longer hungry was never an issue. In that sense, clean plate mentality was a problem.
But I was never told to clean my plate. I don't practice that philosophy.
I have a serious medical condition. The mental freedom to just say no to some of the food on my plate has played a critical role in my ability to manage my condition with diet and lifestyle.
I'm fine with finding ways to discourage waste. But I'm very much against the "clean your plate" policy.
It wasn't uncommon for my father to eat what was left on my plate rather than throw it out, but my right to decide what to put in my body was always respected.
I think that -- respecting a person's right to control what goes in their body -- is an excellent policy. I'm not trying to talk trash about your parents. I'm just saying it's possible to be anti-waste without this rule. There are other ways to do that and I think they are better.
This sounds great but breaks down at implementation. My 5 y/o is not yet equipped with the mental discipline to have this autonomy. We force him to try everything we put on his plate. New foods are introduced in small quantities to prevent wastage, but we fully expect him to try all the weird things he is quite sure he hates. If we gave him autonomy, he’d choose candy and soda.
My view on parenting in general is that the whole point is to teach kids to be independent (and to live their own lives in their own houses). But autonomy is granted as a child learns and is capable of understanding the tradeoffs of decisons. And that is the hard part. It’s very simple to take either extreme: “here’s your dinner, eat it!”; “it’s your dinner, eat what you will.” But I think it’s my job as a parent to teach my kid to appreciate food; to eat a balanced meal; to fill up on veggies and supplement with meat and bread; to drink water over soda; that you can’t skip the salad and expect snacks later; that if you choose to not eat that means you’ll be hungry later (where I typically bring back what we had as dinner as the food option); etc.
Really, I think this whole parenting thing is a crapshoot. But I find comfort knowing I’m helping support some future therapist who can help my kids overcome all of my mistakes. It’s my contribution to America’s future GDP...
I was a full-time mom for many years. It did not break down in implementation in my home. In a nutshell, I made healthy options that my kids liked available in adequate quantity. I did not find that they wanted to live on candy.
FWIW, I also required them to taste new foods, especially fruits and vegetables, and not simply reject things out of hand. Though I was a lot younger back then. I'm not sure if I would do that these days if I were raising kids, which isn't likely to happen. But I did do that at the time.
As long as a child is receiving adequate nutrition, is it necessary to force him to expand his culinary horizons? Natural curiosity tends to balance out temporary fixation in the absence of such abnormal thinking that might arise from feeling a lack of control.
> If we gave him autonomy, he’d choose candy and soda.
Whether or not this is the case, there's a difference between allowing choice and allowing all choices, and there's a difference between imposing quality and imposing quantity. But, I don't think the stereotype of a kid binging on junk-food without boundary is accurate outside families that build such foods into a rare, prized(!) and denied commodity. It's just unfortunate that that attitude is so pervasive.
I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. But I’m guessing yes. There’s a natural internal conflict between curiosity and the comfort of routine. Every person (and thus every child) has a different predisposition in this spectrum. There are some kids you can probably get away with letting curiosity win. Our 5 y/o does not appear to me to be that kind of person. I expect he’d be very happy to live in our basement into his 30’s. Or maybe 50’s. Every kid is different.
> I don't think the stereotype of a kid binging on junk-food without boundary is accurate outside families that build such foods into a rare, prized(!) and denied commodity.
I thought this once but no longer do. Every kid is different, but our youngest is very happy to be “full” at dinner (i.e., “I don’t like that food”) and want snacks in 20 min. To which I present him his dinner plate.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/br...
I was told, as a kid, that it was rude to not eat all the food put in front of you, especially at other people's houses. Other parents would comment on how polite we children were for clearing our plates.
This does not make much sense to me. If eating all your food is the only alternative to throwing food out, it is sort of OK, but even then, it does not solve the issue at all because you are the one eating all the food, not the starving kids in China.
Additionally, why come up with such nonsense? This is one of the worst things you could do to your kid. You should instead educate them and tell them the actual reasons for why one should not waste food.
Mind you, if you cook less instead, then you would not have to eat them, nor throw them out. :)
I am not sure that this is how I would teach my kid to be grateful, especially because the kid might perceive it to be forced and might backfire in the future.
Anyways, we might be overthinking this. :)
I assume you are only responding to "the kid would not need any reasons to be told if s/he is hungry.". It is true in most cases, I was not accounting for depression and so on, but that in itself might dissipate hunger.
Most toddlers will eat when they are hungry, they will not just go hungry. Power play or power struggles complicates things, I deliberately did not bring it into this. Regardless, I still do not see that it is necessary to come up with reasons that are completely wrong or silly. :)
Still completely unhelpful to the starving, and still orthogonal...
Me: Got a stamp?
Mom: <SMACK!>
Eating everything on your plate indicated that you were ravenously hungry, taking advantage of your host's hospitality.
Leaving just a little uneaten meant that you ate as much as you could because you found the food delicious.
These behaviors are passed down through generations, but what was adaptive is now maladaptive.
I eat only what I want, when I want. And how much I want.
The trade off, of course, is dying alone. But hey, health!
I don't think it's unreasonable to have a partner and eat differently to them. It's pretty common where someone has a dietary requirement.
Even worse, I have celiac and an esophagus condition that is much worse with overeating, and habitually at restaurants I’d clean my plate because I thought getting a takeout box was a waste, but I did not want to see the food be thrown out. I also see a similar pattern with containers of packaged food. I’m much more likely to finish that last one or two cookies or handfuls of chip crumbs and leave them for later.
I’m not sure that this study contains any new useful advice, but it is a real phenomenon.
In adulthood though, having completely restructured my diet to something devoid of calorie-dense, quickly-digested fillers, none of this matters. I never have leftovers of whatever I'm eating, just to avoid the hassle; food going bad, or simply less cleanup. It's of no lasting negative consequence to my weight.
I think this issue is largely a red herring as a result. What you're eating dictates the significance of how much. If you fix the what, how much becomes irrelevant.
Just keep a spare zip-loc bag in your pocket, ready for the sudden and embarrassing situation when you are full with food left on the plate.
> Using self-refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation.
> Participants who were unknowingly eating from self-refilling bowls ate more soup than those eating from normal soup bowls. However, despite consuming 73% more, they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls. This was unaffected by BMI.
At buffets I either pick small plates or intentionally pick a small number of items regardless of how much of the plate is used.
With soda for instance I eventually realized that the main reason I was drinking a certain amount was a combination of the cup size and the straw. I switched to tiny cups that I drank from directly and found I could easily make that last a meal and have some left. Now I barely drink soda.
As a former professional cook it burns me to see such a casual suggestion to waste food. I’ve worked for people who would weigh the food you swept up off the floor at the end of the day to illustrate waste.
Saving for the next day and especially donating isn't practical in the small amounts we're talking about.
Personal home cooking is very different from large scale professional kitchens / dining.
You might be surprised though how leftovers are recombined to form new dishes, even in large scale operations. Working with what you got can be just as important as food safety, foundational knowledge or technique.
It helps to have a few go-to recipes that can accept a wide variety of ingredients in small portions. For me, I usually go to either omelettes, veggie burgers or fried rice / stir fry.
Donating is the hardest one for sure due to laws and logistics. I’ve taken to giving out my extra sourdough bread or cinnamon rolls to friends and neighbors, or have my wife take them to the office; there’s always one or two that we know we won’t get to before they go bad (if we want to maintain our physiques anyways).
Even if I do cook for myself I am often unsure whether it is safe to reheat the food, and for how long.
The worst case is that reheating doesn't reset the timer. If you put the leftovers into your fridge within a few minutes of eating, you have tons of time left on the timer, and don't need to worry at all.
I leave pea soup and pot currys at room temp (19-23c) for 24-48 hours before I eat them; after that they keep for several days in the fridge.
If you live in a warm climate and/or leave food uncovered all day then you're asking for problems. In those cases I wouldn't reheat them..
That’s surprising to me given my own experience behind the scenes with institutional food service, which involved massive amounts of waste.
For years I had been throwing the stem of the broccoli into the compost only to find out that it's not only edible but it's really tasty.
Then I hear that the leaves of radish is also edible, so that gets thrown into a stir-fry / omelette / stamppot / salad for another meal..
It took me well into college to realize that (especially in a dining hall) I could serve myself a conservative-sized portion and get more later if I was still hungry.
It's not like food prices fluctuate based on everyone wasting certain portion of food. Global food prices are usually dependent on the supply side more than demand side.
Restaurant portions of food you’d actually do well to eat on a regular basis aren’t large. They’re usually tiny compared to DIY at home.
Order a “pasta with scallops” for an extreme example of how many you actually get vs what you could get if you cooked it yourself.
But suggesting portion control would be advocating more personal responsibility, so maybe that explains peoples’ “disagreement.” So much easier to toss in the trash, right?
is it rude or a sign of being poor? I'm unsure.
But enough anonymous internet tough guy talk, I’ve been taking home food for decades and no one has ever uttered a word. Olive Garden to $200/person, it’ll get boxed with a smile. Hell, waitstaff often come around and ask if you want a box (which I sometimes take to mean, “I’d like to turn this table, Slowpoke.” <g>).
I've had food boxed up in a ~$100 per person restaurant before and it was completely normal for them.
Cut everything neatly in half when it arrives and move it off to the side for easy boxing. Then eat a sensible amount and ask for a box for the rest.
Places that don't expect this will signal as much by serving you a portion that wont make you ill.
Thinking about wether or not it is a sign of being poor is a sign of being poor. What would Scrooge McDuck do?
Whatever the f* he wants.
I do feel bad when I can't (or won't) finish, and don't ask for a box. Aiming to eat only half the meal, so you have a good amount to bring home can sometimes help avoid overconsumption, too.
It's interesting that nobody wondered people are just concerned that food would get more expensive.
Restaurants set their prices by complex rules, and if people just started some movement to reduce portion sizes on the "if you want more, you can always ask for 2" argument, with no extra change, it's almost a certainty that prices would raise.
An extra serving would add more labor as the expensive part and not save anything. The way to avoid that would be to keep a fresh surplus in the kitchen which would get wasted anyway.
Essentially it would unfortunately amount to 'efficiency theater' without very large assumption changes - sodas for instance have free refills because it is already a massive profit margin due to the sticky price-point where everyone expects it to be a dollar something while the actual cost is measured in pennies. You would die of water intoxication before they would realize a loss from refills.
Theres also the problem that no one ever complained that the portions were too big. Small portions could make people feel ripped off.
It's the only workable way to get a sensible fast food portion size.
Obviously, wasting food is bad. But if you've already served yourself too much, it's a sunk cost. This should be taught to kids, even if it's a somewhat more complicated lesson.
To avoid overeating, I only eat once a day.
so I always had to finish.
Furthermore, what's on the plate matters as well. Three fried pieces of chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy is not the same as broiled chicken with steamed vegetables.
I suspect - based on anecdotal evidence - people who often over eat also too often eat badly.