WHY YOU SHOULD EAT STRATEGICALLY

A while ago, I was having dinner with my daughter and suddenly realized that this hereditary trait thingy is real—she eats like me.

Some people deal with their plate simply by gobbling down the food, but others are much more methodical. To be clear, I am not talking about brumotactillophobia (it's an actual term; you can Google it). Brumotactillophobia is a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder in which a person worries about foods touching each other. It is so common that Amazon sells a variety of food plate dividers that help to keep the various foods on your plate isolated.

Brumotactillophobians will find great excuses for purchasing them, such as that "A balanced diet involves dividing your plate into three parts: 50% vitamins, 25% grains, and 25% protein. This ensures balanced nutrition in every meal to support your weight loss goals." I don't believe people can eat that way for more than a meal or two if the purpose is "to achieve balanced nutrition," but they will happily do it to deal with brumotactillophobia.

But I'm not judging. If foods touching each other bothers you, you should do something about it. Why suffer?

But my daughter's obsession, and mine, is very different, and actually, a very positive one. It is like wine pairing. As Le Cordon Bleu teaches us, "Successful wine pairing will enhance the dining experience–potentially heightening flavors, textures and qualities in the food." Before we start pairing wines and food, we need to know how to pair foods with foods. So, when eating, we ensure that we always stack bits of all foods that work well together and "heighten flavors, textures, and qualities in the food." But that's the easy part. The harder part is making sure your enjoyment is constant throughout the meal.

Let's take a simple example. You ordered an omelet with crispy bacon and fried tomato for breakfast. You will want to have a bit of each of them on your fork, and that's a straightforward decision. But the problem is their relative size. You need to pick with each fork the exact amount of each that will leave your plate empty with the last bite. Being left with a piece of bacon to eat all by itself or a bit of omelet with nothing else on the side will leave you unsatisfied with your meal. But this is a simple example. Doing the same with a less familiar dish requires greater eating prowess.

I have tried to explain to myself the mechanism that infallibly gets me to the end line with a clean plate. I have concluded that my brain continuously calculates how much of each food is left on the plate and determines the required size of my next piece of each. Then, it communicates that information to the part of the brain that controls my motor skills. It sounds exhausting, and sometimes it is, but the reward is in my taste buds.

Have you ever considered whether you are like me, a brumotactillophobian, or perhaps one of those lucky individuals who enjoys their meal without much thought to the order of things? If you didn't, I may have given you a way to enhance your enjoyment at the table, or I may have ruined it forever, in which case, I apologize.