The hot new trend in New York City is eating out of a bowl

It can be difficult to keep up with all the fads and trends in New York City dining, what with the green juices and the bone marrow and the tiny, tiny cupcakes.

But the latest hot cosmopolitan trend is simple: It’s bowls, baby!

“Hot, Skinny People Are Ditching Salads for ‘Power Bowls’,” the New York Post reported on Wednesday. The article’s central thesis: Hot, skinny people in New York enjoy eating out of bowls now. They’re all about the bowls. They want their food served not on a plate, nor on a tray, nor via intravenous tube, but rather, in a bowl.

“For chic, wellness-conscious New Yorkers,” the Post found, “it’s all about healthy, hearty bowls filled with veggies, proteins and flavorful toppings.”

Now, you might be thinking: Isn’t that just…a salad?

This is why you are not a DJ/model with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. Salad is not the trend. When we talk about Power Bowls, we’re talking about “whole grains, lots of vegetables, some type of protein, some type of crunch, a really amazing dressing,” per Lily Kunin, a 27-year-old New Yorker quoted by the Post. Think brown rice; think lentils. The Wall Street Journal, in a January piece titled “Bowls Are the New Plates,” points to “heaps of ravioli, salmon nestled in quinoa, [and] eggs piled on grilled vegetables” as three examples of trendy meals served in bowls.

Bowls, the Post wagers, are not just a “concave vessel” in which food is served. In fact, the bowl can enhance the flavor of a dish.

“I’ve eaten the same meal on a plate,” one Bowl Believer told them. “It just wasn’t that good.”

Above: A bowl of food.

A bowl, if you’re not familiar, is “a round, open-top container used in many cultures to serve” food, according to Wikipedia. Though the inventor of the bowl is unknown, bowls have existed for several millennia, all over the world. From these humble beginnings, the bowl has since been spotted in the Instagrams of several tastemakers and has appeared at hot NYC restaurants like Jack’s Wife Freda, in SoHo, as well as Dillinger’s, located in trendy Bushwick.

Should you eat all of your meals out of a bowl? Maybe. The hot, skinny people of New York City are certainly eating their meals out of bowls; there is nothing that says us normal people, who aren’t hot or skinny, cannot.

So grab yourself a bowl, and place the food you normally eat inside of it. You may not be hot, skinny, or the owner of a Barry’s Boot Camp, but at least you can feel like you are.