The Size Of Meat Portions

The easiest and surest way to reduce the meat fat in the diet is to reduce the size of the portions, and this also helps to keep the total calories of the diet within bounds. The large servings of meat now so common in businessmen's lunches are a sign of status rather than of nutritional requirement and can only be justified when the rest of the meal is poorly designed and prepared. Huge servings of meat are poor substitutes for good cookery.

The Italian custom of starting the meal with a big plate of pasta - spaghetti and the like - has the virtue of filling up the diner to the point where he is content to take only a small amount of meat to follow. A bowl of soup as the first course has much the same effect and contains fewer calories, but salad does not do the job so well. We think the place for salad is after the meat course, when it provides a desirable freshening of the mouth and has the advantage that the diner, knowing that salad is to follow, is more content to stop without gorging on meat. When a man can only count on good meat and a prospect of nothing but a cloying sweet to follow, he will fill up on meat if he can. Make the accompanying items of food as tasty as possible, offer them in generous amount, and the meat consumption will decrease.

We do not advise removal of meats from the diet but we insist that complete eating satisfaction, including the hunger for "animal protein", can be obtained with only moderate amounts of meat by intelligent menu planning and more attention to the art of cookery. A diet developed in this way will not only be better in regard to fats and calories; it will also be more interesting in the long run.