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Now She Likes it Dirty

The fog rolled into San Francisco and turned the windows of the pub grey. We were on the 37th floor of a hotel in the business district in a Sherlock Holmes-themed bar, and I was drinking the worst cocktail of my life. No matter what we ordered, they found a way to get it wrong, but just wrong enough that it sounded right. I grimaced with each sip, praying I'd soon see the bottom of the empty glass. "Why are you finishing it?" my friends asked, having already abandoned their potable disasters. "Because I can hear my mother's voice in my head saying, 'Drink it! There are sober children in China!'" I was joking, but the obligation to leave no leftovers had been ingrained since childhood. I'm not the only one of my generation discouraged from picky tastes by parents desperate to see food not wasted. Less harried parents might enthusiastically cheer their children into gluttony by holding the Clean Plate Club over their heads. And they were merely echoing their own parents. The poster children changed over the years, from the soldiers overseas who needed you to eat for Victory, to those infamous hungry Chinese kids. Now we can see how the Clean Plate Club has led to larger portion sizes, type 2 diabetes, and epidemic juvenile obesity. My internal tapes of Mom have been replaced by my wallet reminding me, "You paid for it, why shouldn't you eat it?" So I've chartered a new solution: the Dirty Plate Club. I'm trying to leave at least a little food on my plate each time I eat. Sure, I paid for it with money, but I won't pay for it in heart disease. When my imaginary Brad Pitt tries to remind me about the starving children in Darfur, I laugh and tell myself I'm taking a stand against outrageous portion sizes. And when I'm eating my pain, I chant, "Just. Walk. Away." It's working. Now, two-thirds of the way through most meals, I feel full enough to stop eating. As a result, I don't walk out of the restaurant feeling like I need to be rolled down to the Juicing Room. My jeans fit better too. I've torn up my membership card to the Clean Plate Club. Now I like it dirty.