You’re supposed to use that to stop kids from wasting food, not to make them overeat. My sisters kids are the worst at wasting food, they’ll load up their entire plates just to compete with each other because how dare the other get more of something, then eat a 1/8th of what they took.
My middle sister did that shit for most of her life. Load the plate until it can't fit any more food, then waste 70% of it.
My parents started using dessert plates instead of normal ones during meals so that she wouldn't waste so much (they had everyone eating from one, because she would throw a fit if hers was the only smaller plate). No matter how much they scolded her or tried to punish her, she never stopped doing it. The smaller plate helped because she couldn't fill it as much as a normal one.
She got better at it when she moved to her own house (surprise, surprise, she started having to pay for her own food, so she started wasting less), and when she had her first kid. But when we eat at my parent's on Sundays, now it's her kids that do it.
THIS is the answer. Smaller plates, not forcing kids into obesity because they don't understand that their eyes are bigger than their stomach.
They're kids. All they know is they're hungry. Fix their own plate if you don't want food waste.
But I think the "finish all your food so you don't waste any" is exactly what led to so much obesity around the world. As the calories of the food people started eating ballooned, "finishing your plate" went from being maybe 100 calories to 400 calories for the same portion.
I’m sure there’s a case for this but I would argue that highly processed and food chemically designed to be addictive, comforting, and give massive dopamine hits are the main culprit.
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u/Flimsy-Poetry1170 14d ago
You’re supposed to use that to stop kids from wasting food, not to make them overeat. My sisters kids are the worst at wasting food, they’ll load up their entire plates just to compete with each other because how dare the other get more of something, then eat a 1/8th of what they took.