What is it with bowls?
"part of the appeal in an age of social media is the whole look of breakfast bowls with their colourful hues and #cleaneating bragging rights." Lola Berry
Today's post is inspired by this page from the latest Aldi catalogue - and also from others in the Coles Magazine. The page at left is not actually advertising a product Aldi has on special this week, it's just a sample of their recipes, but using all the products on the opposite page which advertises all their 'health' food things like seeds, berries, weird milks, coconut everything and yoghurts. Then it's all arranged prettily in the bowl over some kind of smoothie something. Healthy yes, pretty yes, expensive yes.
And at least two of the ads in the latest Coles Magazine, as you can see, featured breakfast bowls.
Why so popular? Well one writer on a website called Medium blames it all on Instagram.
"While there are perhaps multiple reasons why this bowl-mania has been spotted by major players in the food industry since 2015 (restaurants chains, food blogs and industry experts), my money is on Instagram. How much more photogenic can they get? These bowls look like they’re going to jump off the screen and scream “shelter!” to your belly and are a perfect setting for #foodporn if you think about the mass proliferation of epic-looking bowls on platforms like Pinterest or Instagram." Camille Mijola - Mucho at Medium.com
(Note to self - I really must do a post on Instagram.) I have done a post on Donna Hay and presentation and of course she does breakfast bowls - not all like the above and below though - some are just breakfast food like eggs arranged in a bowl. But if you're going to do a fancy breakfast one day, take a look.
Which leads one to wonder whether it's the contents of the bowls that matter or is it just eating out of bowls that is the thing. Is it the same for restaurants as for the home cook? Would you make a breakfast bowl like the ones at the top or the ones shown at left (from a Coles Magazine promotion, advertising the seed mix). Would you really take the time to cut out the mango or whatever it is into fancy shapes? I guess it's not hard to do - make a couple of different thick smoothies, pour them in the bowl together, cover the line with fruit and sprinkle with seeds and herbs. Even simpler - the Aldi ones are just one smoothie with the fruit and seeds on one side. The ones you see advertised generally include expensive ingredients like acai berries and chia seeds, but really it doesn't have to be expensive. In fact you can probably make a more nutritious breakfast bowl with oats and fruit and yoghurt.
“If you just have oats would people label them super? They are low cost, have low glycaemic index, which makes them healthy, take longer to be digested and absorbed and give you a feeling of fullness throughout the day which stops you snacking ...
rather than eating breakfast bowls filled with exotic and expensive ingredients, humble porridge with a handful of berries can be just as good." Zoe Yates
However, to be fair, it has to be said, that the two sources for my article today - Aldi and Coles are not aiming at the higher sectors of society. They are aiming at Mr. and Mrs. Average - well Mrs. Average I reckon - it's still mostly women in the house who are in charge of what we eat. So what is the appeal?
Bowls were probably the very first things we ate out of, once we had stopped eating with hands alone - well coconut shells, conch shells, crudely fashioned wooden bowls. They are ancient. I suppose plates came in when you had big slabs of meat that wouldn't fit in the bowl and needed something flatter. But according to researchers and bloggers alike we didn't much go for bowls in the twentieth century - except for soup and breakfast cereal and some desserts. Apparently we didn't like mixing up food - the vegetables had to be kept separate from the meat - unless it was a stew but even then you would have been served something starchy and maybe green on the side. Mind you I remember going through a phase, when I was about ten I think, of mixing everything on my plate together. Maybe I was ahead of my time! The rest of the world, of course, mostly eats out of bowls and always have. And there is one theory that we didn't eat out of bowls last century because it was associated with the poor, who had so little that they just put what they had altogether in a bowl. Now with the globalisation of food, it's exotic to eat 'peasant' food.
For the bowl is not just for those pretty breakfast bowls. It's also for just about everything we eat. Though I notice that most dinner sets that you see, or crockery on sale in Aldi is still centred around plates. It's only the Chinese shops that are heavily into bowls. However, I think the Coles Magazine virtually always has at least one 'bowl' meal - well one that is announced as a bowl, and several that look like they are served in bowls. This month it was a salmon dish (shown above). The idea here is usually to start with some kind of grain and cover it with your vegetables and meat or fish, finishing off with sauces or herbs. Here are two pretty Donna Hay versions.
I'm guessing that from a food stylist's point of view it's pretty easy to make these things look stylish and tempting.
The other theories about why we eat out of bowls are to do with laziness and comfort. In the twentieth century we had frozen TV dinners which tended to be laid out like an aeroplane meal. The food was compartmentalised, but able to be eaten easily on the couch. Nowadays lots of people sit on the couch, cradling a bowl whilst still watching TV.
"While eating out of bowls might be somewhat pedestrian for some (etiquette is okay but convenience is so 2017) there is an irresistible laziness about bowls: you are throwing things in, gravity does the work of mixing it for you as you eat, they are the definition of sofa-compatible, are easy to hold, you don’t have to remember knives and, for my fellow sloppy eaters, you are less likely to spill onto yourself while eating from a bowl. Oh right, and you can Instagram it. Boom!" Camille Mijola - Mucho at Medium.com
And I must confess I do like to eat pasta out of a bowl. I'm not sure why. Part of it is less mess perhaps, but it just seems right somehow. Not on the couch though. I haven't yet sunk to that.
As to comfort, well there is scientific research to suggest that:
"A bowl that we pick up and touch is more likely to set an expectation of a hearty, filling and healthy meal. That weight in the hand is likely to make your brain think the food is more substantial and you’re likely to rate it as more intensely fragranced and aromatic than for exactly the same food sat passively on a plate ... There is research out there showing that if you feel something warm in your hand the world looks like a better place.” Professor Charles Spence
And if you think about it, the foods that are traditionally served in a bowl - soup, cereal, pudding - are all 'comfort' foods.
We haven't quite got there yet in this household. Just the pasta for me. David still eats it from a plate. And soup. But nothing else. And I was never any good at making things look pretty either. Oh, and I don't have an instagram account.
And I've just realised I've more or less said all this before, as recently as February this year too. Sorry.
