Quitting The Clean Plate Club

Quick question: When you’re out to dinner and you’re feeling full, are you able leave that last, lonely meatball on a plate by itself? Or do you insist on eating it despite your fullness? Leaving that meatball is hard, man. I know!

A couple of years ago, we were traveling… ok more like eating our way through Italy. Let me tell ya, no pizza crust was left uneaten and there was no pasta noodle left un-twirled. In fact, one of our waiters in Rome nicknamed us “The Dishwashers” and we proudly continued on! Yeah, we were proudly hitting the “Clean Plate Club” hard.

Being members of said club didn’t happen just because we were in Italy though. Eating all of the food on my plate whether I’m hungry or not has been consistent behavior for me since a young age and turns out I’m not the only one. The average adult finishes 92% of food on their plate. It’s part of a cultural phenomenon in the US that starts at quite a young age. We are taught not to waste food because there are starving children elsewhere, that a clean plate is a happy plate, that we’ll get dessert if we finish our broccoli. Despite whether or not we are still hungry, we are learning to ignore our internal satiety cues and instead look for those cues externally via the policy of “no morsel left behind”. This behavior is problematic for a number of different reasons.

So, let’s unpack the “Clean Plate Club” (CPC) dogma and talk about why we should dissolve it. The whole premise of cleaning your plate came out of a WWI government campaign to regulate food production and consumption. The CPC was rolled out in 1917 and was a major effort to avoid waste and ration ingredients that were in short supply. In schools, children were taught this little diddy; “At table I’ll not leave a scrap of food upon my plate. And I’ll not eat between meals, but for supper time I’ll wait.” Thus, the CPC was born and we had the first generation of people taught to ignore their own hunger cues in the spirit of patriotism. The campaign ended after WW1, but popped up again during the Great Depression and stuck around. So here we are, over 100 years later, with a population that can’t leave the last slice of pizza alone in it’s box. It’s just too sad looking.

It’s bigger than that though. Being in the Clean Plate Club has some pretty major health ramifications. By ignoring our fullness cues, it’s led to a vicious cycle of poor food relationships and an inability to trust our own body’s needs, which in turn has led to expanding waistlines, chronic health issues, hormonal imbalances related to fullness and disordered eating patterns.

Where do we go from here? How do we move past this doctrine? Glad ya asked! For those that don’t know me, I love a good cause (some would call it a soapbox) or any other effort to subvert an oppressive belief system (Hi, I’m Callie and I’m an Aquarius). So, here is a perfect opportunity to do so!! Let’s burn the CPC down! The Clean Plate Club is an outdated tradition that no longer applies to the American reality of food production and supply. By lighting a match to it, we can work to repair our relationship with food, start practicing Intuitive Eating and relearn how to be mindful of our internal hunger signals. Here are some tips on how to break CPC behavior...

1. If you’re worried about waste. Honey, it all turns to waste one way or the other. Whether you throw it down your gullet or in the trash, it pretty much amounts to the same thing. So, you’re not really being wasteful by listening to your body and honoring what it’s telling you. It’s okay not to finish your meal. Sometimes we have guilt when leaving uneaten food on our plate. If this happens to you, try starting a compost pile for your garden or using leftovers as bird feed. If you’re a city dweller, that might be tough, but there’s compost collection all over the place (look them up here). Personally, we love leftovers. Wrap that morsel up and repurpose it for lunch tomorrow… or don’t and chuck it. Shifting the thought paradigm here in terms of what it actually means to be wasteful can be helpful. For us, that would be eating that last slice and not enjoying it.

2. Respect your fullness and be mindful of your habits. Are you cleaning your plate out of habit or real hunger? Odds are you generally finish most of what’s on your plate with no regard to how full you feel. Respect your cues! It all boils down to this one fact; you are a well run machine and your body knows what’s up. Take the time to LISTEN and honor your satiety. If we’re trying to break clean plate habits, start by making it a habit to leave one or two bites on your plate. Rules are made to be broken. In this case it’s the clean plate rules - which aren’t even rules. This is your opportunity to take back your power!

3. Remember that you can always have more. Do thoughts of not being able to eat later or that you’ll never taste pie this good again keep you with your fork in hand? I call this food FOMO and it’s real for me, especially when we travel or we’re out to dinner. But here’s the thing to remember; The most enjoyable bite is the first one, that’s the one to slowly savor. As your meal goes on, your taste buds become more accustomed to what you’re eating, so by the last bite you’ve built up a tolerance to it. If you’re feeling full and ignore those internal cues, your food won’t taste as good. Take a few moments as you eat to breathe, put your fork down and enjoy your food.

The good news is that once we start listening to the right signals, we can have a better relationship with our food and our bodies. Studies indicate that tossing the CPC to the curb can lead to healthier eating habits, reduced risk of obesity and disordered eating patterns. Breaking these habits won’t happen overnight though. Remember that it probably took you years to adopt the clean plate mentality as a child. Think of all the times you were told you couldn’t leave the table until you finished your dinner. The same will go for unlearning those rules. Remember to give yourself permission and a long leash to experiment with rebuilding your connection to food and your body. You may leave the table whenever you want! How freeing is that? Need help with rebuilding your food relationships and intuitive eating? We are here to guide you on your journey toward healthy and positive food practices.

Sources: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/comfort-cravings/201407/4-ways-quit-the-clean- plate-club https://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/research/consequences-belonging-clean-plate-club http://www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/ https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/saying-goodbye-to-the-clean-plate-