Eating Is Not An Olympic Sport

I went out to dinner recently with some older relatives. They love to go to these all-you-can-eat buffets. There were a lot of hefty people there. One woman had to use 2 chairs to hold her very wide bottom.

When women gain weight it tends to go to the hips first. For guys its the big bellies that hang over their pants.

They all piled multiple plates high with a ridiculous amount of food. If there were any individual flavors before they started piling the food on, its a sure thing they didnt last through the buffet line.

You see people in those places go after their dinner like down hill racers or pie eating contest competitors.

Or they yell Food fight! except they toss, cram and snort the food down their throats instead of around the room. Its like pigs at an indoor trough (oink).

They are going to eat all they can as fast as they can before someone else gets it. And its mostly junk food, too.

For those of us who really like food and want to savor it and truly appreciate it eating everything fast is just wrong. So are several pounds of food on one little plate.
A plate with a rim is only supposed to have food in the middle of the plate. There is not supposed to be food on the rim of the plate.

I bought some new china to add to my ever-growing collection. It is called Grand Gourmet. It includes rimmed soup bowls that will hold 4 CUPS of soup in one serving. I only bought the salad plates because I DONT WANT TO BE A GRAND GOURMET (translation, big eater).

My grandparents had a farm. Every morning they would put milk in a cream separator. They would keep the cream and the whole milk for their use and save the skim milk for the pigs. Then they would add things they could feed the pigs throughout the morning. The pigs liked it fine, but I wouldnt.

How can you enjoy the flavors if you just cram everything onto your plate and then down your throat as quickly as possible so then you can get MORE? After all if you want to get your moneys worth from an all-you-can-eat buffet you have to eat a LOT. Right?

Well, maybe not.

If you eat all that food frequently, you will gain weight and then pay a lot of money to doctors and hospitals for treatment for all the deadly health problems associated with obesity like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

And you will also pay more for health insurance than your peers who maintain a normal weight.

And you may die younger and special order a biggie size coffin.

And that might not be where you want your Olympic event to end.

To me a plate is like a work of art. I want to be able to see and taste and enjoy all the flavors of a particular recipe, not a bunch of recipes all junked together and dumped into a pig trough of a plate.

A beautiful salad can be exquisite to the eye as well as the palate. And the aromas can be appreciated, too.

Think of the perfume of fresh ginger or pineapple or citrus.

Eating well is one of the great pleasures of life. Take time to enjoy it. Eat only the best and most flavorful foods. Skip the sugar and forget the competition to see who can eat the most. Your body is a temple. Treat it with the respect it deserves.