08 Nov A side salad for FREE and other strategies for food establishments
There is an elegant way to encourage people to eat more leafy greens and/or February (haha) – not sure who it is ‘inside of me’, , , but they make some very funny ((mistakes)).
Aaaaahhhhh, , , I stepped into Laurent on Whitehorse Road in Balwyn yesterday afternoon. It was past 3 PM, , , and I required sustenance. . .
Before that when I was strolling down the street perusing the cafes in that neighbourhood, I thought to myself ‘I would like to eat salad’.
I knew it was going to be a tough find. There was a Vietnamese eatery with a salad, however, I didn’t feel like meat, as I had been eating ‘all sorts of strange things’ during my morning.
In any case, there was a cafe open until 4 PM. That wasn’t going to help me since I needed to do my webs work.
For some reason I felt compelled to cross the road 😛 and came across Laurent.
A number of tasty things were in their display cabinets, including an impressive (and healthy) array of sandwiches.
I know that I crave green vegetables and leaves because I ate them as a child. This is the fact that I wanted to impress upon my nieces Tiny and Teeny, , , (especially Tiny right now). . .
Taste preferences are ‘imprinted’ on your preferences in the womb and as a child
My brother and I crave vegetables because my mother and Pop decided to ‘go bush’ when my brother and I were small children of 4.5 years and 6 years. . . They grew a vegetable garden, and we were eating lots of vegetables with every meal. . . I would sit in the garden and feast on egg tomatoes (dipped in mayo), strawberries and other delights.
I don’t remember eating A LOT of vegetables, , , and my brother didn’t like all the food we ate, or was not as accepting of it as I was. . . ((in any case)) we had a garden, and we ate vegetables. . . (as well as fish oil, home made muesli with raw oats and honey, weetbix, ,, and presumably fruit (although I did not develop a taste for that).
Earlier than that my Mum told me that she was ‘very conscious’ of what she offered to my brother and I as babies and young children. She would blend vegetables such as pumpkin (the only vegetable I now hate), as well as all sorts of other vegetables, , , and pureed them into baby food for Dexter (a pseudonym for my brother that refers to the DJ/musical artist (a previous member) from The Avalanches – not the serial killer) and I to eat as babies and small children.
In my nutrition studies I have learned that preferences for foods develops as a child. . . It makes sense to me on an anecdotal level, for example with the kinds of foods that my parents prefer.
What can eateries do today to help people develop a ‘preference’ for leafy greens and vegetables?
Case in point. . . I wanted to sit in a cafe to do work for my Mum and chat to my dear love friend. . . Here is where it gets interesting. . . I ordered a Mushroom Quiche because I was done with meat for the day. . . (or so I thought at the time). . . When I placed my order, the waitress asked ‘Would you like salad with your quiche?’
I assumed that it would cost money 9 probably a lot, , , so my instant (heuristic, perhaps) instinct was to say ‘no thank you’. However, there was a a bit of a kerfuffle with my drink order. I wanted something with some flavour (something a bit fancy), )(ie. not simply sparkling mineral water), and I wanted it to be LOW SUGAR (for all the reasons I have outlined in previous posts.
the drink on offer had 23.8 grams of sugar in it. . . It felt like a lot, , , (and it is half the *daily* amount of sugar recommended by the CSIRO Low Carb diet). . . however, I acquiesced because I wanted a drink while I was working on my puter, Pipeldoot.
This break in the proceedings gave my brain enough to rationally come back to the ‘salad situation’. I asked ‘how much is the side salad?’ And she said ‘It is free’. So of course I asked her to add it to my order!
Fruit mineral water, quiche and side salad at Laurent Balwyn
When the drink came out (they gave me a nice glass), I sipped on it and was actualement (meaning ‘actually’ in French language), , , extremely grateful for the sugar. (This is the flipside to the sugar argument – – – our brains require carbohydrates to function (for energy), and our brains use the VAST PROPORTION of energy required for our bodies. . .
In any case, the quiche and salad came out, , , and the side salad was smallish, , , but had a number of lovely fresh leaves. It was dressed in a creamy dressing, that I initially baulked out (‘the fat, the calories!!’ I thought), but then i stopped and realised that dressing vegetables in something tasty is ANOTHER sexy way to get people to consume vegetables in a way that is palatable to them.
As I ate, I pondered over these ‘strategies’… If you have been following my nutrition blog for any length of time, you would know that my pet project is working out how to encourage people to eat more vegetables.
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