Long Bones

Take this optical illusion:

Now you know, even if your eyes deceive you that the center circle is the same size in both pictures, right? Because otherwise it wouldn’t be an optical illusion. Use the same principal when you are dishing up dinner. Pretend that the circle in the center is your food and the perimeter around the outside circles is the edge of your plate. One potato on a small plate looks bigger than one potato on a big plate.

Brian Wansink, Ph.D., the author of Mindless Eating (which I highly highly recommend and nobody paid me to say that) goes into this in detail. Unfortunately I lent my copy of the book to Shondar so I can’t quote him exactly, but it is scientifically proven that you eat less if you eat off small plates.

In my house the salad plates are always dirty first, followed by the bowls. I do have to warn you about eating from bowls though, what they lack in diameter they make up for in depth most of the time, so if you eat from bowls make sure they’re shallow.