The improvements would be manifold: A smaller plate would mean less food waste.  This is important in two regards: First, we should honor our food. It is always interesting to me that for months and years of work raising an animal, that work can disappear in a single meal. It takes about two months to raise a chicken, and yet one chicken will feed a family of four only once. There is a lot that goes into that process, and there is a life that is taken for one dinner. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't eat chicken, but we should realize that there was tremendous work and sacrifice in every chicken dinner. By eating everything on our plates, we honor that work and sacrifice. Much the same goes for vegetables. It takes two years to establish an asparagus patch, and yet I must admit I don't always finish the asparagus on my plate. I heard once that Gandhi used a pencil until it was a tiny nub in order to honor the work of those who made it. We need to follow a similar ethic in our work—smaller plates would be a first step in that direction.

Secondly, we have a national obesity epidemic. People are eating more food than they should. Dieticians have long suggested smaller plates as a solution. But there is another kind of diet that a smaller plate could help with—the carbon diet. Many people are now beginning to try to decrease the pounds CO2 in their lives; by eating less of the food that emits a great deal of CO2 in its production, we would be lessening our negative impact on the planet. Beyond this, eating less would lower the amounts of pesticides used that have been recently linked to 50 percent declines in some songbird populations and a host of other ills. Eating less would also allow families to justify a fair price to farmers who do not grow on an industrial scale and need to charge more for their products.

So next time you set the table, substitute the large plates for the smaller ones—you and the earth will be better for it.