Play Ball

The new dinner portion guidelines came out recently. Do away with cups, teaspoons and other measures and think in terms of ordinary objects: ping pong balls, decks of cards and bars of soap. Just what I want to be thinking about at dinner time.

So, a proper portion of rice is a ping pong ball and broccoli would be a tennis ball and meat would be a single playing card (diamonds for rare and clubs for well done, I guess). The idea is to visualize these common objects when shoveling food from the trough to your plate so you don't overeat.

I thought I'd give the idea a test drive at my favorite Mexican restaurant. First, I visualized how many enchiladas in a stack would be needed to reach the Moon. Turns out the answer is about 30 billion.

Great! I'll have the Moon Combination Number 1 and hold the sour cream, I'm watching my waste line.

While waiting for Junior to prepare my enchiladas I thought I'd munch on some chips, but how many? Bowling ball? Sounded to heavy to me. I went with weather balloon, instead. And make that a beach ball of salsa, too. Thx.

You know, I think I'm going to like this new food visualization scheme. Let's see, how about a school bus of refried beans ...