The song from Ciara featuring Missy Elliott, 1, 2 Step, runs through my head as I sit here pondering why we eat more than a few bites of ANYTHING. We do not need a lot of something to feel a lot of pleasure from it. In our culture of more, we often equate quantity with quality. Big mistake.

A buffet is not better than a plated meal because you get more for your money. A buffet is better because of the quantity of the variety you get to have in that ONE meal. We need not eat three plates to get the most bang for our buck. Instead, the most bang for our buck would be having one or two bites of the highest number of different things.

Instead of leaving feeling sick to your stomach, leave feeling satisfied and appreciating the joy of variety. As William Cowper wrote in 1785, variety is the spice of life. There is an idea I fully believe in that we only truly taste the first one or two bites of a food. After that, more is only serving satiety.

Unfortunately, we have been conditioned not to waste food and we often continue to eat until our “plates are clean.” If you are full and your consumption has reached its peak in providing you energy production, then enough is enough. Unfortunately, cleaning your plate will not satisfy the starving kids in a third world country. We all wish it would.

With one bite at a time,

Nikola Rosa