Seafood? See Food?

When one of my uncles was asked if he liked seafood, he would always reply with a smile: Yes, I love seafood! See food, eat food!

His little joke held a lot of truth in it, it appears... Studies have shown that we are more tempted to eat if we see food around us.

The solution for those of us who want to eat less food? To keep food out of sight!

I have been trying to make changes in the house so that I won't see food unless I'm actively looking for it... I no longer keep food in see-through containers on the counter. One of the changes I'd like to implement now is to keep dishes of food off the table at mealtime. That would mean modifying a family tradition we've held for more than 30 years!

When Terry and I were first married, we disagreed on how food should be served at mealtime. I had been raised in a home where serving dishes were placed on the table and people could take as much or as little as they wanted. In Terry's family, parents had served the food and handed full plates out to members of the family. I hated to have anyone but me decide what and how much I would eat - and Terry didn't want to give up his family tradition.

We eventually switched to my family's way of doing mealtime after we mentioned our disagreement to an older (and wiser) friend, who suggested that letting people serve themselves was more democratic, less dictatorial...

But now - more than thirty years after determining how we would do meal time - I have been reading that studies show we eat less if we don't see serving bowls heaped with food in front of us...

Now I want to move our serving dishes into the kitchen where we would serve ourselves, buffet style. This would necessitate getting up and walking into the next room if we wanted seconds. Most importantly, it would mean that we wouldn't be looking at so much food.

Would we eat less?! I'd like to give it a try to find out!