The Clean Plate Club - Is It Bad?

A clean plate as old as time.

There is a strong chance that if you find yourself reading this blog post, that you also found yourself listening to your parents tell you to join the “clean plate club” when you were a child. You know what I’m talking about right? That simple saying that your parents would use when they wanted to make sure that you ate everything sitting on your plate, especially those vegetables that we know every kid just loves to eat? Yea – that club.

Now what if I told you that the clean plate club is potentially a bad thing to encourage? That pushing a demand on a child to “eat it all” might just instill binge eating habits or a lack of portion control that could very well last us into the later parts of adulthood? The clean plate club may be better left in the past, with a shift towards encouraging healthy and intuitive eating, but let’s talk about why and where it stems from in the first place.

From generation to generation, and maybe a war or two.

The whole emphasis on joining the clean plate club really took off during war times, especially during World War II, when food utilization and awareness was at its peak (though the club certainly existed before then). I mean we were at war – so make sure that you and the kids finish your broccoli because that is what we are fighting for! Sometimes that encouragement to finish the whole plate was chased by the ever popular old saying - “there are starving children in Africa" - which alluded to this idea that if we didn’t eat what we were so fortunate to have, that we weren’t grateful for it. Our grandparents encouraged our parents, who then encouraged us, and now we encourage our children to eat it all and leave no morsel left behind on that beautiful white porcelain disk.

Which is why I’m here to say that we should consider putting an end to the clean plate club for good – so hear me out.

“The clean plate club absolutely could be a contributor (to eating disorders). I mean we call it a ‘happy plate.’ So in order to be happy you have to have your plate empty, and that’s a direct association of someone’s wellbeing and happiness to having all of their food gone. Whether we actually consciously know that in the back of our minds, ‘oh if I have all my food gone I’ll be happy,’ it becomes this automatic response for us.”

- Tiffaney Rains-Eaton, LCPC - Behavioral Health Therapist at Quincy Medical Group

While encouraging a child to eat every piece of food in front of them, no matter how small or big that portion may be, sounds like a great idea at the time – it can very well be encouraging disordered eating as we get older. What seemed harmless and sensical, turns into us as adults lacking a total sense of portion control and an inability to stop ourselves despite being full. We see food, we eat food, and we binge until our stomach has expanded like an overblown birthday balloon because we’ve been conditioned to ignore being mindful about our consumption rather than stopping when we know we are full. As time goes by that lack of portion control causes us to gain unwanted weight, feel sluggish or sick, and potentially lend to chronic medical conditions we’d rather avoid because that concept of knowing when to stop ourselves was never established.  

If you find yourself wondering whether that is really the case or not, here is a quote from someone who approached us about nutrition coaching here at Xplore (who will remain anonymous):

“…with a minor binge eating issue I’ve had since I was little (I blame my parents forcing me to always finish all of my food)…I’m eating everything bad and a lot of it.” 

It’s a very real thing, and one most of us may not even consider. So what can we do instead of the clean plate club, while still encouraging kids to eat new foods and their ever important vegetables? I had a chance to sit down with Tiffaney Rains-Eaton, LCPC (licensed clinical professional counselor), a behavioral health therapist at Quincy Medical Group (QMG) who works with individuals battling eating disorders, and Kirstie Kemner-Schoen, the Director of Behavioral Health at QMG to talk about how we can encourage kids to eat in a healthy way without pushing the old mantra of the clean plate club. Let’s check out a few different options.

1. Explain the why, and meet your children at their level.

More often than not, knowing why we are doing something helps us to understand why we should do it in the first place. How we talk to kids about that is important, and it may be even easier than you think! Rather than telling your child they should eat broccoli “because it’s good for them,” think about their age and how you can relay that message to them in a relatable way.  

Example: a six year old may think that Thor or Black Widow from the popular Marvel movies are their hero. Rewording our message to something along the lines of “eating your broccoli will help you grow big and strong like *insert hero here* someday,” could get them to eat what you want without encouraging them to eat beyond what they need. To quote Kemner-Schoen:

“They (kids) have to understand the why. I feel like we don’t do a good enough job of preaching to children at their level of understanding how it can make them bigger, faster, stronger, and healthier.” 

2. Kids naturally have incredible hunger cues – encourage that intuition, listen to them, and make changes. 

“If your body is saying you’re hungry, then it’s telling you it needs something and that’s ok, and we need to listen to that. And it’s funny because we teach our kids to listen to their bodies in other ways, so why do we tell them to ignore their body with their hunger?” - Tiffaney Rains-Eaton, LCPC

Not hungry? Don’t eat! Feeling a bit on the hungrier side? Have a meal or a snack! These are hunger cues that as adults can start to escape us, but as kids, they are something that we are very much in tune with. So much so that we don’t give those cues nearly enough credit, and even teach kids to ignore those natural intuitions at times.

We should be encouraging that behavior rather than the opposite. Sometimes that is as simple as not encouraging kids (or adults) to eat past the point of hunger. Learning that lesson as a child could make a drastic difference as an adult. Another thing to consider is how we often eat out of sheer boredom.

“I think we put food in places where we teach them (kids) to eat when they’re bored,” said Kemner-Schoen as she was discussing long family road trips where food used to be encouraged - it’s kind of like “feeding the beast when your kids are bored, so here’s a snack to keep you quiet, or busy, and so on.” Eventually that changed as time went by. She’s now moved on to packing little road trip food bags that are only brought out when they are requested - “Now they are not just eating when they are bored. I wait until they tell me they’re hungry and they want a snack.”

3. The “take three bites” rule – finding a balance.

This idea came from Kemner-Schoen herself, and is one that she uses with her own family, so I’ll let her explain:

“We do the ‘three bite rule’ for all of our fruits and vegetables. You have to have three bites of each thing and then you can be done - but the minimum requirement is to have those three bites of each thing. It works! They have their three bites, but they might have five or six bites of this, and then I learn more about what they like.”

Some times the beauty is in simplicity - something that the “three bite” rule happens to nail on the head. Not only are we encouraging kids to consume a substantially less daunting three bites vs the whole plate, but in doing so we are also increasing the likelihood that they'll try new things and find ones they enjoy as a result. It’s practically a food win-win, can be managed alongside hunger cues, and probably won’t make your child throw a tantrum because you forced them to eat ALL of the frozen peas.

4. Acknowledge the difference between body and brain.

As we were talking away, Rains-Eaton brought up an extremely good point about bringing a bit of awareness to what our body needs vs what our brain wants as a kid:

“Is this your body or your brain telling you that you’re done? Because our brain will be like ‘well mom said when I’m done I could go play,’ so my brain tells me I’m done so I can go play! Helping them differentiate between what their body is telling them right now verse their brain can make a difference.”

If you were able to read that point, and couldn’t think of a time as a kid where you ate all or part of something so you could get back to doing something else, then by golly you might have just been a saint as a child! I can personally recall dozens of times where I probably scarfed down more than I needed, ate when I wasn’t hungry, or finished what I didn’t want for the singular purpose of getting back to playing a game or hanging out with my friends. Taking the time to teach kids how to know the difference continues the trend of teaching them, and eventually us as adults, how to listen to our bodies.

So what are the takeaways?

I’m certainly not saying that something like the clean plate club is the root cause of disordered eating in children or adults, but as Rains-Eaton said - “The clean plate club absolutely could be a contributor (to eating disorders).”

What I am saying is that there are better, and healthier alternatives like the points raised above that not only encourage kids to try tons of new foods or to eat their vegetables, but it also encourages them to understand and listen to their bodies in a way that most don’t. That natural intuition, or hunger cues, are something we lose touch with as we grow older despite it being ever so valuable to our health and wellbeing. So rather than encouraging the opposite, maybe it’s time to consider meeting kids at their level when it comes to eating what’s in front of them. Besides - what kid doesn’t want to grow up to be the next Thor or Black Widow? Taking a new approach could just result in raising your own little hero.

This blog was created by Xplore Nutrition founder & nutrition coach - Sam Karoll.