To the credit of chefs, cooks, and grocers everywhere, American meals are becoming prettier and prettier. Whether it’s French fries, sushi, Boston cream pie, or salmon steaks, restaurateurs know how to present their specialties. Golden-brown strips of potatoes rest in festive, scalloped crimson boxes. Bite-size morsels of fish are wrapped with chopped pastel vegetables and condiments. Rich brown chocolate dribbles down the sides of toasty brown cake filled with creamy yellow custard. Steam rises from deep brown striped, moist pink fish set off by marinated, grass green asparagus.
It’s no surprise, then, that seeing food can be just as appealing as eating food. The old adage, “My eyes are bigger than my stomach” has never been more apt. A return to the days of tinned, shiny, cartoon yellow peach halves or crimson punch, though, might not only reduce appetites, but also nutrition. Is it possible to eat for taste and nutrition, not just visual appeal? Must one eat beige chunks of parsnips, white cubes of tofu, and mounds of puce, pickled beets? Certainly, voluntary resignations from the “Clean Plate Club” would rise.
Such drastic measures are unnecessary. Neither food wastage nor ugly foods are required for smaller waistlines. Setting the table at home with pretty, but smaller plates will both please the eye and require small helpings. Colorful platters of grape clusters, orange segments, watermelon slices, pineapple chunks, and strawberries will offer strong competition to sandwiches, potato salad, or fried rice. Such visual and visceral satisfaction will make it easier to resist ordering take-out pizza and drive-through hamburgers. It will also save you from powdered pastel diet shake mixes, tinned white tuna fish, dry white toast, and bottled, diet salad dressing.
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