Clean Your Plate

“Oh, pity the poor glutton

Whose troubles all begin

In struggling on and on to turn

What's out into what's in.”

― Walter de la Mare

 

Clean your plate.

 

Here is some bread to wipe up the gravy.

 

There are starving Africans somewhere. I am ungrateful. I am wasting food, and African children are starving.

 

No one wants to waste food. That is wasteful.

 

Don't eat until you are full. Don't stop when you are not hungry. Finish it all. Clean your plate. Don't be wasteful. Africans are starving; somehow, if you don't eat everything on your plate, they will not starve.

 

Somehow.

 

If you don't clean your plate, you won't get dessert. Your reward for overeating food is sugar-dense you don't need but really want because it will trigger those beautiful hormones in your brain and make you feel so good.

 

And as you finish that custard from the carton that smothers the ice cream from the container and the hydrogenated fat-laced sponge cake, your guilt is gone because you have saved the starving Africans.

 

You cleaned your plate. You didn't waste food.

 

If the Africans are still starving, it is not your fault.

 

I think about this concept of wasting food. The food I eat to clean my plate and not to be wasteful.

 

If there is too much food on my plate and I eat it, how is it different from throwing it away? One receptacle is the garbage; the other is my stomach. It is going somewhere unnecessary. Better the garbage than into my ever-hungry face.

 

“Leave something on your plate... 'Better to go to waste than to waist” – Michael Pollan

 

Maybe the fridge for tomorrow's lunch. We all know I will be stuffing it down as soon as I am bored. Not hungry. I am never hungry.

 

One becomes landfill, the other makes me fat, and I now know the Africans starve either way.

 

We should never have been told to clean our plates. Never bribed with dessert to eat more than our fill. Never made to feel guilty about not starving Africans.

 

I once attempted portion control with a smaller bowl. I would fill the small bowl so high I couldn't eat the contents without making a mess. Putting less food in did not seem to be an option.

 

The Africans are still starving.

 

I tell myself that the mound of peanut butter on my sandwich is just a couple teaspoons, and I believe it. I tell myself that a cheat day is just a onetime thing, and I believe it. The worst lie I tell myself, and the most powerful one, is about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the golden day. That’s the day when I’ll quit overeating and start working out and set the course for a new version of myself.” ― Tommy Tomlinson