I’ve just watched Good Work with Dan Toomey’s investigation into “Why are we eating ‘slop’?“. Slop is what we now call those protein-and-grain-based bowls from the likes of Chipotle, Chopt, CAVA, Just Salad, and DIG. (But, plenty of people make them from home). These mixed bowls, typically a jumble of grilled chicken or steak (maybe salmon), rice, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, and drippy sauces are the happy version of the age-old “sad desk salad”. If you work in an office environment, you know the drill: come 12 p.m., droves of business-class clad customers flock to the nearest fast-casual spot, pick out their normal mix-ins, head back to their desk, plug in some headphones to listen to a podcast, and fork it all in. In this article, I discuss the influences behind the popularity of this sort of meal and answer the question: are slop bowls healthy?
Tasty, Cheap and Convenient: The American Dream with Hispanic Influences
Five key drivers behind consumer food-choice decisions are taste, nutrition, cost, convenience, and weight control. The authors of a study report that the level of importance placed on these five influences predicts the types of foods we eat1. Unsurprisingly, research suggests that people who place a high value on taste have lower-quality diets than people who do not place much value on taste2. Similarly, people who place a high value on low-cost and on convenience have lower-quality diets than people who do not place high value on these influences. The habit of eating tasty, cheap and convenient meals is traditionally seen as “unhealthy”, however, slop bowls are the special case—in spite of being tasty, cheap (when homemade and not $25 at Chopt), and convenient, slop bowls are healthy.
Interestingly, there are cultural differences in the relative importance placed on these influences. The authors report that, despite “attaching importance to cost and convenience during food shopping”, Mexican-Americans and Hispanics “consumed higher quality diets”3. Rice, beans, meat and vegetables—the Hispanic (and Mediterranean, Asian and African) cultural influence on “slop bowls” cannot be ignored. No wonder multiple studies support the idea that “some ethnic dietary patterns may hold the key to achieving healthier diets within [income] constraints in the US”.
Not only modern-day ethnic cultures rely on these lunch bowls, but according to the story “All Hail the Slop Bowl, Lunch of Our Ancestors” by Allegra Rosenberg in Atlas Obscura, evidence from Mesopotamian, Roman and Victorian-era sites suggests that historically, we’ve been eating slop bowls for ages. She writes,
For most of human history, resources were so strained as to make a single large meal a day a necessity, versus a luxurious three or more. That meal was usually some kind of combination of starches and proteins.
Are we seeing a pattern? Busy societies need quick, filling meals. The bowl format has always been an easy way to load up on such foods.
Are Slop Bowls Healthy?
Yes! Slop bowls are healthy and a are a great daily choice for weight maintenance. These dishes tend to be high in protein, good fats, fiber and antioxidant-rich vegetables. In my article, Does Soup Make you Eat Less? Prevent Weight Gain by Eating Simple Meals More Often, I talk about “composite meals”: the type of meal where its ingredients are served all together in one mixture. Slop bowls are the quintessential composite meal. There, I explained the “sensory specific satiety” of foods. This phenomenon reveals that the repeat exposure to the same flavor bite-after-bite makes you “bored” of the flavor, causing you to eat less of the food than if the ingredients were served separately (think stew vs stir-fry). On a meal-to-meal basis, the practice of eating slop may prevent overeating.
Furthermore, a randomized control trial found that when participants were provided portion-controlled prepackaged lunch and dinners, they lost more weight than when they followed more standard diet plans4. Regarding slop bowls, many people meal prep for the week and thus can use them wisely to help with sticking to appropriate meal sizes.
Making it through the day with a healthy bowl of slop
Going back to the original inspiration for this writing, (Dan Toomey’s Good Work investigation on Youtube), all-in-all, Toomey poetically deduced that our culture’s preoccupation with the convenient and good-enough-tasting bowls of slop “represents a congealed, somewhat discolored group of people trying to get through the day”. I agree, and pushing it further—say that using these vessels to load up on healthy meats, veggies and grains is encouraging more than just “making it through”, but “making it healthy”.