Learning moderation

So, I'm getting this whole "moderation" thing down. Instead of being either insanely deprived or insanely indulgent, I've been treading the middle ground recently, and been very happy with it. One of the things I've done, is gone back to using Bento Boxes for my lunch.

I use Japanese Bento boxes that I get online from either eBay or from ichibankan. Here's an example of what one of my lunches would look like:



I had a small tub of peanut butter and half an apple in the top half, along with two wedges of Laughing Cow French onion cheese. There's a crispbread under the clear lid to that container to smear my cheese on. The bottom of my bento contains Apple-Walnut Chicken Salad. I've got half a protein pita to eat it on, too, but no container to put it in.

It's not much food, but since I've been surgically altered, it's plenty for me. Now, before I happened on this particular bento - this is the first bento that I purchased - I'd been looking for an old, old Tupperware-style bento. Like this one (photo not mine - I found it at this blog):


Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, I was woefully inept in my internet searching and didn't come across a single one - despite the dozens currently available on eBay... *facepalm*

What I did come across, though was the Laptop Lunchbox. It's a tidy enough system, what with the different sized containers, hard outer shell, and nifty carrier. Here's what it looks like:


I think it's quite nifty, if a little large, which is what my basic problem with it was. See, being surgically-altered, I wouldn't have the room to eat all of that. That's a lot of food - quite a bit more than my typical Japanese bento holds. They market this lunchbox toward getting kids to eat healthy, too. Now, I'm about to have a bit of a rant here, so hold on to your hats.

It has been shown - but damned if I can find it right now - that children learn to eat what's in front of them. They learn their portion sizes in childhood and carry them into adulthood - ergo, if you serve a child a lot and tell them to clean their plate, then expect that they're going to expect proportionately larger servings into adulthood. And those proportionate servings are going to be much larger than the actual recommended serving sizes. Do you follow me?

By serving a child a large lunch, using a box like the one above, you're encouraging them to eat outside of appropriate caloric bounds. You're showing them amounts of food - they aren't sophisticated enough to calculate calories, so while they might be eating an appropriate amount of calories through eating lots of veggies and fibrous fruits, wholegrain bread, and other nutritious staples, they can be learning inappropriate serving sizes. Of course, the other problem here is that not every child has a lunch of nutritious staples. Twinkie, anyone? Our caloric intake in this country is out of hand!

You may find that your child is satisfied with less food than you're serving. Of course, if they tell you they're hungry, then feed them! I don't advocate putting children on diets - just serving them appropriately. That's a lesson I know I'll flub somewhat, given my own food issues. But I can tell you that my child is as yet a normal weight for someone her height. When she's hungry, I feed her. She eats all kinds of stuff - although, I'll admit she doesn't care much for vegetables other than asparagus. We eat a lot of asparagus here at Peevish Place. Ok, rant - and subsequent digression - over (well, almost).

Well, as it happens, I was in Barnes & Noble this week - I go there to sit in the cafe and read the magazines for free - and I happened upon this book: The Nine Inch Diet. The basic premise is simple - over the years, our dinner plates have grown in the same geometric slope as our nation's obesity crisis. In the 1960s, a dinner plate measured 9 inches. Today, a dinner plate measures 12 inches. The author suggests that if we all went back to 9 inch ,and serving sizes appropriate to those plates, then we'd all, as a nation, lose weight.

It looks simplistic, but you know? I can totally see it. If you, like me, were conditioned to clean your plate, not to waste food - there are children starving in China! - and eat what was put in front of you, then today's gargantuan serving sizes are quite a challenge. The WCM's parents went through the Great Depression as children - wasting food was anathema in their house. Consequently, it used to drive the WCM nuts when I leave anything on my plate. Since my subsequent alteration, he's learned not to say anything. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?!

Well, when I told the WCM about this whole 9 inch plate deal, he smirked at me. Being a scientist, he was quick to remind me that correlation does not equal causation (although he was quite a bit more pithy in his reminder...). He did, however, hypothesize that, using the same logic, perhaps the cold winter we're experiencing is due to the increase in pirates in Somalia.

My laughter, I'm sorry to say, was immoderate.