Most people eat some combination of food that is good for them and food that tastes good. Finding the balance between the two is a lifelong journey. This is the story of that struggle.
If you have chosen to eat better in your life, you may have put some dishes in the back of your mind. You said, "Someday, I'm going to eat that food once again."
You could wait for a birthday or some other holiday, but you might decide that even 1 day a year is too frequent for a particular meal. Well, today is the day you can break out that menu and truly treat yourself.
Today is Leap Day, the extra day we get every 4 years in years evenly divisible by 4. A special day once every 4 years? Break out the crazy menu.
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, waiting 4 years for a treat would be almost too much to take. This is your chance. Take a shot.
The question is whether you can have an occasional treat such as this and be able to handle the time in between visits. For most foods, a 4-year wait is beyond the realm. We would want a taste, a sniff more frequently than an American presidential term.
However, if you are just starting out, or taking Lent to experiment with eating better, you can set a 4-year break as a "someday." For those who choose to play this way, someday is today.
Enjoy this while you can. Your next chance to play will be February 29, 2016. That's a mighty long time from now.
Conservatives felt the decision smacked of the nanny state and government intruding in the role of parents.
Liberals hated the idea of a reasonably healthy lunch supplemented with "nutritious" processed chicken.
They were both right in that the decision was wrong. And perhaps, this could be a teaching moment to prove that the sides of the school lunch battle can agree on something.
The school lunch battle has been intense enough without dealing in home-packed lunches. Conservatives wouldn't want interference with home-packed lunches. Liberals have bigger problems to consider.
After all, this is what the small child had in her lunch box: turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice. Sounds better than most school lunches.
Adults eat unbalanced meals and mostly do okay. Children need more balanced meals, but the difficulty stems from another element where liberals and conservatives can agree, though for different reasons: the USDA guidelines aren't a good way to determine whether a meal is nutritious.
Conservatives don't think the government should set standards. Liberals hate that French fries, tater tots, pizza, and ketchup become "vegetables."
From what we've heard, the 4-year-old child was missing milk from her meal (though cheese could have counted) and somehow ended up with chicken nuggets. And it's not like this happens on a regular basis, even in day care centers and preschools in North Carolina.
Wouldn't it be nice … if parents packed lunches for their kids each and every day, and those lunches were reasonably nutritious, and the kids ate most if not all of those lunches. Conservatives and liberals would like that. Wouldn't it be nice … if parents gave their kids a balanced breakfast in the morning and a good nutritious dinner at night. Liberals and conservatives would like that. Wouldn't it be nice … if schools would have well-prepared food to supplement children's lunches on those days and times where close to perfect isn't even a remote possibility. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad.
Despite the "Leave It to Beaver" mentality of some of the GOP presidential contenders, if that world ever existed, we don't have that world now. Our school children are suffering not just in terms of food but also the energy to learn and play.
Even if liberals and conservatives disagree on the solutions, do they agree on the problems? Until they agree on the problems, very little will get solved … even with chicken nuggets.
"I would love to pour this whole box in my mouth right now, but the memo clearly states that 'we can't show overconsumption'. That is a 'brand don't'. You see the serving size for Wheat Thins is 16 crackers, so as delicious as they are, I shouldn't eat more than 16."
The serving size for Wheat Thins is 16 crackers. This has now been drilled into our head, thanks to Stephen Colbert.
"If they are shown out of the box (like in a bowl), there should only be a max of 16," — from the memo.
"While Wheat Thins is 'a snack for anyone who is actively seeking experiences,' those experiences do not include the experience of eating 17 crackers," Colbert said.
When reading the label on processed food, you have to pay attention to the serving size to get a true impact of what you are about to eat. If you tend to eat twice the serving size, you should take the numbers and double them.
Colbert poured out the box and magically only 16 crackers came out … into the big giant bowl. The visual was as startling as it was hilarious. He then proceeded to put all 16 crackers in his mouth at once. As he dared to actually put the 17th cracker in his mouth, the show cut away (in its usual style). Colbert then reappeared sans crackers in his mouth, reading an apology from a "suit" standing behind the sheepish Colbert.
What a wonderful way to mock the limitations of the serving size and marketing-ese that flooded the memo. Attention food companies: send a memo to the "Colbert Report" at your own risk.
Having a sense of how much you should eat is a serious and noble thing. Mindlessly eating crackers or other snack foods can add up over time. But stopping at an arbitrary amount set by a corporation? Well, that sounds as silly as the way Colbert presented it to be.
"Mmmmm. You can taste the palm oil." — actual quote from me after eating a Thin Mints cookie.
Okay, so I was being sarcastic. You can't literally taste the palm oil. But you may notice it when it's gone.
As heart-warming as the Girl Scouts are, and all of the wonderful things they do and learn, and how they need our support against a bizarre political accusation, you might be inclined not to buy the Girl Scout cookies … for the palm oil.
You've read the stories about the evils of palm oil, and how the Girl Scouts just won't take the palm oil out of the cookies.
This is also Girl Scouts cookie season when your co-workers that are parents or you're the parent and Girl Scout cookies are all around the office. Or someone you know bought some and passed one onto you.
My boss at my day job offered me a Thin Mint and I took it. It was good. Quite good. But I didn't want to eat a whole box. None would have been sad; one was just right.
I could have said "no" because of palm oil or high-fructose corn syrup or calories or any of a number of good excuses. And I had turned down the peanut butter kind. I said "yes" because I wanted a Thin Mint cookie.
Would it be better with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup? Oh, yea. Would it be better with trans fats rather than palm oil? No. Would it be better without palm oil? My hunch is that the taste would change, and not for the better.
I'm also not eating 10-20 cookies. One cookie with some palm oil won't make a difference.
How many are too much? Like the owl in the 1970's Tootsie Pop commercial, you can't always know the answer to some questions.
If you really feel bad about what is in the cookies, you can buy the cookies and not eat them. Buy the cookies and give them to someone else. Give the Girl Scouts money and don't take the cookies.
At some point, the Girl Scouts will likely get rid of palm oil in the cookies, and maybe high-fructose corn syrup. But we aren't going to hold our collective breath on this. Enjoy the cookies or don't. If you do take a cookie or a box, enjoy them at a leisurely pace. After all, a cookie is a treat but the money you give to those Girl Scouts pays itself in multiples down the road. The future of these young women is more important than a little extra palm oil in your life.
Ew. Seriously? So gross. Ew. Seriously? That is so gross. Ew. Seriously? Dude, that is so totally gross.
You likely have seen the GEICO ad. Guy is trying to lose weight, but as he notes, "weight loss programs can be expensive." So he hires three popular middle-school girls to observe what he eats and react accordingly.
Too often, when we go a little nuts, we don't invite people to be witnesses. We go through this alone.
The guy in the commercial is easily tempted, but gets the clear message that he shouldn't be eating what he picks.
Because in real life, it would be creepy to have three 13-year-old girls follow you around day and night to see what you're eating, perhaps you might want to ask yourself, "Do I want someone to watch me eat this?" If not, you could put it back or not order it. Or if you do, maybe have just a little.
Otherwise, that would be totally gross. Seriously.
Editor's Note: The following takes place in a parallel universe, though the New Orleans in the parallel universe looks pretty similar to the New Orleans we all know.
Tom walks down Bourbon Street, munching on broccoli. The crunch almost keeps rhythm with the loud music all around. After all, this is Skinny Tuesday, the day before people will gorge themselves (except Sundays) for the next 40 days.
Taking in the sights, he goes back and forth between eating the broccoli and drinking from the bottle of pomegranate juice in his other hand. Tom does cheat a little by adding some blueberry juice, but given the dark red color, unless anyone else could smell or taste it, they wouldn't know it wasn't pure pomegranate juice.
He thinks about all the foods he gets to eat starting tomorrow. Grilled cheese sandwiches made with donuts, hot fudge sundaes, fried chicken skin in a bowl with whipped cream on top. Oh and French fries dipped in gravy, mayonnaise, ketchup, chili, nacho cheese. His favorite trick is to dip a fry into each condiment and eat the five fries all at once.
He has been getting ready for this time of the year. Hasn't had meat in 3 weeks. Whole grain pastas and bread dominate his diet. Tom made extra batches of his lentil and beans stew, which he freezes so he can have something to eat on Sundays. Gets plenty of vegetables, dipping them in dressing on the side made with extra virgin olive oil. He has been eating fruit for dessert. Tom is going to be so ready.
Tom is a little nervous about tomorrow. After all, he isn't used to eating the way you do after Skinny Tuesday. His body will not be used to the new diet. He isn't sure how he'll handle the taste. Once you have become used to the vitamin goodness of raw broccoli, can pork rinds possibly give him that same satisfaction?
Tom lets the music embrace all around him. He loves this moment when people are having a really great time before they make the sacrifice of eating junk food. Besides, Tom thinks to himself, it's only for a few weeks out of the year. And if Tom is honest with himself, he could stand to gain 10-15 pounds.
Two peanuts were walking down the road when one was assaulted.
Eventually the 9-year-old and 39-year-old will laugh at that joke. The 9-year-old will laugh louder than the adult would. The adult might be more worried about the salt content of the joke.
The USDA's 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans say we should get no more than 2300 mg of sodium a day, 1500 mg if we fall into a riskier category. Right now, our low range of what we do consume is higher than what we should have if we're otherwise healthy: 2395-4476 mg.
Top 10 foods for sodium content
Ranking
Food
1
Bread and rolls
2
Luncheon meats
3
Pizza
4
Poultry products (nuggets, patties)
5
Soups
6
Cheeseburgers/other sandwiches
7
Cheese
8
Pasta
9
Meat dishes
10
Snack foods (pretzels, chips, popcorn)
I spent part of a recent Saturday trying out new fast food items that were being handed out for free. McDonald's was pushing its Chicken McBites. Its free sample consisted of 2½ tiny pieces of breaded, deep-fried chicken. Burger King was pushing its new onion rings just after the restaurant touted its new French fries.
I foolishly tried the French fries and onion rings together along with a Burger King hamburger (the McDonald's "meal" didn't fill me up). Admittedly, I don't eat too many fast food fries, especially a regular order, and had forgotten how much salt they cake onto the fries.
When you shake a fast food French fry, you get enough white tiny pellets to fall out that it looks more like dandruff. You get the feeling that the meager wages of a fast food employee is augmented by a salting bonus, where extra money rains down (Morton Salt reference, ask your parents) if you oversalt the food.
If you salivate every time Giada DeLaurentiis oversalts the pasta water, you might have a problem with salt, unless you avoid processed food. Good luck with that.
Bread and rolls came in #1 for the most oversalted processed food, according to the Vital Signs Report from the CDC. The top 10 list accounted for 44% of our salt consumption.
How much could you improve your salt intake if you reduced your dependence on processed food? We get 65% of our sodium intake from foods from stores, more than 2½ times as much from restaurants.
We need salt, lest we die. Salt is not killing us, but too much is not doing us well. If you reduced sodium in products, and then salted to taste, you would get a win-win since everyone would enjoy food at their ideal salt level. Until then, do what you can to obtain a balance of salt in your food.
Those of generations before me (I'm not that old) remember home economics as an option for high-school students to learn the basics of running a house.
Grist recently linked to an article about culinary students at Jasper Place High School in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To show surprise, the author then said, "(yes, Canada apparently has culinary programs in high school)."
I did not know that.
The article talked about how the students were raising 100 tilapia in such a way that the fish add leftover vegetables and scraps and how the fish waste helped the plants grow above the fish tank. Talk about a life cycle.
Though I am much more into food than I would have been in high school, I still would have loved the idea of taking culinary classes in high school. The folks at Grist and I agree on one thing: we would love to know if this type of program exists throughout much of Canada or if this is a rare occurrence.
The original article via the Winnipeg Free Press noted that the kids cook in a commercial-style kitchen, fixing lunches each day for 2,500 students and staff. Having some students cook for other students would make cooking and food into a teaching moment on both sides of the cafeteria. Students learn a valuable skill in cooking the food and those who eat the food would appreciate the food more if it came from their peers.
This isn't some kind of left-wing warm-weather place such as Berkeley, CA. This is Edmonton in Alberta, the most conservative province, at a latitude of 53°34', slightly south of Juneau, Alaska.
"If you love bacon so much, why don't you marry it?"
Valentines Day is one of the worst days when you're single and feeling lonely. But the day is supposed to be about love, and what could be finer than loving bacon?
Well, except for Jews, Muslims, vegetarians, vegans, and anyone else who has similar thoughts on bacon. And for those who might object to man-on-bacon love.
Jack in the Box, in its campaign to promote its bacon burger, is running an ad where a young man surprises his mother by announcing his upcoming marriage. We find out that he intends to marry bacon.
"You may now eat the bride" would be horrific in any other context, but it does prove that this marriage will be shorter than even Kim Kardashian's nuptials.
Loving bacon is one thing when bacon is the source of your love. Another Jack in the Box product, a bacon milkshake is made with "bacon-flavored syrup." If you marry bacon, consuming a "bacon" product that has no bacon would amount to cheating, and not on your diet.
Denny's Baconalia had a maple bacon sundae; while the maple was "flavored," the bacon was real. For the Jews who eat bacon, combining the bacon with milk products would violate multiple levels of keeping Kosher.
Too often restaurants, especially fast food joints, don't appreciate bacon the way you would in a more intimate setting. You would treat it well, cooking it slowly to build up proper browning on both sides, and you wouldn't toss just any old bacon onto the frying pan. You wouldn't take it out of the pan until it was actually done, but not too crisp. Still, your bacon at home would run rings around the limp, barely cooked slices you often find in restaurants.
In promising to marry bacon, you must respect your partner, and you want your partner to respect you. Like some married couples who let themselves go, you don't want to get bacon that has too much fat. You want a leaner bacon with just enough fat to make it interesting.
In marrying bacon "for better or worse," sometimes you might settle for mediocre bacon. Hopefully, you strive for good quality bacon most of the time. "Richer or poorer" means you'll find it is worthwhile to spend a buck or two more for the better stuff. If your bacon is suffering from "sickness," well, you would have to heat things up to make sure that while the bacon is inside you, the sickness doesn't join in the fun. Opt for "bacon" leaning more toward "health."
Sounds simple when you first thought about it. "I love bacon." You can laugh at the commercial at the thought of planning an elaborate ceremony to "marry bacon."
Too often, especially in the United States, we profess to love food, but in terms of respecting what we love, we fall massively short. This doesn't mean you need to be a bacon snob, where you won't eat bacon unless you've shaken the hoof of the pig. Be a little more aware and have higher standards. After all, you've been told many times in the last few days that you're worth having, even if you are currently alone. You deserve the best in love and food.
People of a certain generation might remember the Journey song with that title off the Raised on Radio album from 1986. As good as the song is, the message is more important. We are told to stop and smell the roses, but we aren't usually told to stop and be good to ourselves.
So what does this have to do with food?
Valentine's Day means different things depending on your current category. You have somebody or you don't have somebody.
Those who have someone go through their own hell of dressing up and sitting in expensive restaurants eating overpriced food in order to prove "love." Oysters, chocolate — hopefully not together — are on the love menu.
Those who don't have someone have the most obvious hell. They are bombarded with commercials about valentines and love, yet they feel like it's a party where they can't swing an invite.
Their culinary options include making heart-shaped cookies and then breaking them or eating out of a pint of ice cream, no bowl necessary.
Neither option sounds that great.
This is where Journey kicks in.
"Be good to yourself when nobody else will. Oh, be good to yourself."
This doesn't mean you should be pious in your food choices on February 14. Indulge if you would like. If you are aching for a steak, go for it. If pad Thai will soothe you, consider it done. Blood orange salad, make it happen.
In making a Valentine's Day meal for yourself, if that is the route to go, make it fun but not self-deprecating. Have fun with it, but be upbeat.
Easier said than done. Just pretend you're making a special meal for someone you like, and can't make that connection, or imagine someone special you will meet someday. Once you are done making that meal, give it to someone who appreciates a great home-cooked meal: you. After all, aren't you someone special?
Being alone on Valentine's Day means nobody else is there to be good to you. So take the reins, drive the train that is you, and make yourself a Valentine's Day meal. The only bad part is that you have to clean it up yourself. Be good to yourself … and wait until February 15 to clean up the kitchen.
There is no right way to finding the balance of food, just your way. My typical breakfast is whole wheat spaghetti with homemade sauce, sautéed mushrooms, and a naturally low-fat Italian cheese sprinkled on top. Works for me.