Lettuce Pray

Here at Small Labs, Incorporated, we are always working to bring you the very latest in cutting-edge ana technology.  Our mad scientists, decked out smartly in bespoke labcoats of cotton shantung winter white (belted around the waist and paired with lovely jewel-toned textured tights and black pleather mary janes) scribble formulae in notebooks and slave feverishly over bunson burners and rows of test tubes to find working solutions for the betterment of all anakind.  On the white expanse of granite countertops, glinting from the light of the afternoon sun, jars of loose-leaf tea compete for space with scales, cinnamon, bottles of hot sauce, and measuring spoons.  In one corner, under a lab chair, a cat arises from his nap to walk with a studied insouciance past the family of mice living in their glass box on a bookshelf (in between a dog-eared paperback copy of "Wasted" and a first edition  "Eve's Apple").

Look!  What is this?  One mad scientist works diligently in the lab today while drinking her lunch of black Earl Grey.  In reviewing past findings from our peer-reviewed double-blind studies (a/k/a old ana journals), she stumbles across a favorite technology, once utilized with great fervor -- until one day, for some inexplicable reason, it was abandoned (I'm not sure why -- in all honesty, I think I may have just gotten sick of it after a while, but it was a good thing while it lasted.)  The scientist has dusted it off and put it into service again, and it's really, for lack of a more rigorous scientific term, neat-o.

Are you ready?  OK, here it is..................

Lettuce.

Yup.  Lettuce.

1.  Get a hold of some lettuce.  (Preferably some good lettuce, such as watercress or arugula or baby boston or redleaf -- not that abomination known as iceberg, which is the gastronomic equivalent of a zoning ordinance, say, or a technical manual.  Yaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwn.)

2.  Put the lettuce in a pretty bowl and put the pretty bowl next to whatever it is you are eating.

3.  Take a small bite of whatever you are eating.  Before you begin chewing, pop a bit of lettuce in your mouth.  Chew.  Swallow.

4.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

And what do you have?  Half of what you've just eaten has pretty much zero calories.  You get full on much, much less.  And unlike some other ana technologies developed in various labs and tried by Yours Truly, this one is actually good for you. It's like eating a salad with your meal, but with no dressing (something I can't do, even in the most motivated at times.)  But when the lettuce is actually paired with the food you are eating (i.e., eaten in the same bite), it suddenly becomes entirely doable.  Pleasant, even.  This works with damn near everything (I haven't tried it with desserts, but you are supposed to stay the hell away from desserts anyway.  So there.)  Burritos.  Veggie burgers.  Scrambled tofu.  Flavored almonds.  Veggie chili.

So easy, a rabbit could do it!