Allow
me to start this article with a thought that first came to me
about twenty years ago or so…
The
fact of a brownie is that you are cheating. The sugar, the chocolate,
the sinfully-fudgy-goodness. While it certainly doesn’t qualify
as health food by a list of ingredients, the joy of eating one
is without question good for you. And the experience is almost
exclusively based on it being so good because it is so bad.
I
came to this conclusion about brownies because I had begun to
be aware of low fat foods appearing in the stores and in commercials.
And I didn’t understand. When I ate a brownie, I was most certainly
not thinking about a diet. Salads and smaller portions were the
important consideration for diets in my childhood mind. The fact
of a brownie was its sinfully-fudgy-goodness… take that away,
make it low fat, and what’s the point of eating it at all?
That’s
where you can find my approach to low fat foods, no sugar added
offerings, and almost all diet handbooks. And now a new fad… and
yes, it is a fad… nothing more and with little lasting credibility
in my mind… has taken over the country. That fad is low carb.
I
will admit that my thoughts about brownies became a lasting part
of my approach to food back when diets consisted of eating cottage
cheese with pineapple chunks, or subsisting solely on carrots
or grapefruit for weeks. I am firmly convinced that we have plain
cottage cheese and pineapple diets of just three decades ago to
thank for all of the flavored cottage cheese, cream cheese, and
other assorted items located near the yogurt in the store today.
Someone lived on it for a diet, appreciated that the world deserved
better, and created it. And, along those same lines, I do appreciate
that diet food has improved over the years. Some of it even tastes
pretty darn good.
But
the fact of a brownie remains…
And
here’s what I mean....
I
wrote before about how the four food groups
of my youth have disappeared. Everything is bad for you now. Without
going too deeply into them, here are the four… Diary, breads and
grains, meats, and fruits and vegetables.
Dairy
– Milk or no milk? Good or bad? Whole, skim, 1% or 2 %? What
level is good? What level is bad?
Breads
and grains – Bread? You aren’t really going to eat bread are
you?
Meats
– Red meat isn’t good for you.
Fruits
and vegetables – The last of those four basic food groups to
fall… but I swear I have seen that as you begin to diet, many
fruits are bad for you because they can actually make you feel
hungry quite soon after eating them.
In
any event, everything that I was told to focus on as a child has,
by one organization or another, been declared bad for me. In fact
the entire four food groups have been replaced by a pyramid --
and commercials with baseball legend Ozzie Smith telling me to
eat just nine… nine… servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
Wow.
Funny
thing, I have never heard anyone debate the old advice of eating
right and exercising. What is eating right is open to debate…
but still. Smaller portions, not as many desserts, take a walk.
Not a bad plan at all.
I
admit I’m tired of all the Atkins, South Beach, and so on diets
all over the place. Jared has worn more than a bit thin as well.
As I have already said… I consider them fads that may have enough
merit to be incorporated into future health issues. But certainly
as topics they will disappear as time moves on. Cottage cheese
replaced by Stairmasters replaced by drinking water replaced by
Atkins replaced by South Beach. Fads. In fact, even with the media
blitz and ads for these programs in just about every restaurant
window, I had overcome my nausea of it all and allowed the entire
thing to drift off into the back of my thoughts until I heard
about a new product a few weeks ago.
Low
carb Coca-Cola.
You
have to be kidding me…
Low
carb Coca-Cola.
Please,
it can’t be… but it was…
Low
carb Coca-Cola… with low carb Pepsi on the way.
We’ve
officially gone too far. Way, way, way too far.
When
I was younger I used to watch The Jetsons on television,
and I couldn’t wait to have a system in the house for ordering
food. Walk up, tell it what I wanted, and poof, there was dinner.
A microwave oven came close to the reality, but it wasn’t the
same. To be honest, as things move forward, I’m not so sure that
twenty-years from now the healthy people won’t be eating anything
but saw dust. Of course, not pressure-treated saw dust. That would
be bad. And yet that sure seems like where we are heading. Sawdust
and a water… with lemon.
Too
much water is bad for you. Read that this past year. And now my
carbonated beverages are worried about losing their markets because
of the carbs.
Sigh.
It’s
all too much for me. Maybe they won’t be eating saw dust in twenty-years,
but I can guarantee you of one thing… all these foods people are
telling us are good today won’t be part of the approved diets
tomorrow.
They’re
nothing more than fads.
And
now I need a brownie.