Eating too many varieties of food in one meal

If we were to enumerate all the dietetic errors of which the American people are guilty, we are afraid our list would be as startling as it would be long. The majority of Americans eat to much and they eat too great a variety of food at one meal.
If we would eat less in quantity, masticate more thoroughly and avoid such a great variety, confining the meal to, say, two or three articles, the digestion would be carried on to a far greater advantage.We eat all we really require of one or two articles of food and then we proceed to tickle the appetite with half a dozen other foods, while if the meal had been confined to two or three articles, we should not have eaten half as much.
Bernarr Macfarland - Macfadden's Encyclopedia of Physical Culture

We are so blessed to have so much, but we need to learn to enjoy it is smaller chunks. I don't know about you, but on Thanksgiving and Christmas and special family dinner gatherings, we seem to have a contest to see how many different foods we can have a one meal. We want to make it special by celebrating with excess, and I'm not saying that it is bad to do this once in a while, but we need to be able to let go of the excess in everyday life to be healthy and keep the weight down. I have found a wonderful program, Weight Loss 4 Idiots, that helps with that very thing. It is great nutritionally, but keeps each meal to 2 or 3 different foods. It's a great program, I have lost over 40 pounds on it and I love it.