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Food

This Plate Literally Sucks the Calories Out of Your Meal

The 500 dots on this plate do a lot more than just offer a quaint geometric design.
Hilary Pollack
Los Angeles, US

Losing weight is hard. Really hard. So goddamn hard.

Just when you think you've got the hang of never even looking at sourdough bread, a buttermilk glazed doughnut comes along at a moment of weakness. Or a late-night bacon cheeseburger, or Matty Matheson's stupid, stupid, absolutely delicious Cheeto mac 'n' cheese.

CAN I LIVE?, you ask.

Forget about it. The world is a minefield of calories and complimentary candy bowls.

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But maybe the solution isn't to deprive yourself of calories; it's for someone else to deprive you of them. And maybe that someone isn't even a person, or an animate object. Maybe it's a plate that literally drains calories out of your food as you greedily shovel it from fork to face.

Consider the AbsorbPlate. Created by an agency called BBDO Bangkok in Thailand, it's a dinner plate with a quaint little pattern of 500 dots in the middle, reminiscent of your grandmother's embroidered blanket. But those dots aren't just decorative; they drain about a teaspoon and a half of oil out of your meal, equating to about 30 calories. (Other things that are 30 calories: a clementine, a bocconcini of fresh mozzarella, or a thin slice of prosciutto.)

BBDO Bangkok partnered with the Thai Health Promotion Foundation in hopes of curbing Thailand's growing obesity problem. Thailand currently has the second-highest obesity rate of all of Southeast Asia.

Because Thai cuisine is known for incorporating lots of oil into its dishes—and that probably won't change anytime soon—the plate is intended to effortlessly trim a little of that fat from your meal. Seven milliliters of it, to be exact.

The plate's motto: "Healthier Meal. Same Taste."

OK, so maybe it doesn't suck all the calories out of your heaping plate of pad prik king, but 30 calories here and there adds up—both ways. Use it for all three meals, and that's 90 calories a day, which is 630 calories a week, which is like not eating an entire Whopper.

Indeed (sigh), losing weight is hard. But in all fairness, eating off a holey plate is a hell of a lot easier than hauling ass to the gym.