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ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about how I've become the sort of person who buys organic junk food, and wondering what exactly that says about me as a person. I never intended to become this sort of – I'll admit – weirdo. It happened on accident.*
The truth was, I was trying to incorporate more refined sugar in my son's diet, and organic junk food just turned out to be the easiest way to do that.
I grew up hating health food, because my mother was very into it. At some point in my childhood, she began reading books by dieticians, particularly one named Adelle Davis, whose books she could quote chapter and verse. Every morning at breakfast, every member of my family would find a little container (the plastic shot glasses off of cough syrup bottles, actually) full of vitamins. We each got at least a dozen little pills, each carefully selected for what my mother deemed to be our specific needs. We all got a bright orange Vitamin C, a little squishy yellow gel capsule of Vitamin E, a big dark amber gel capsule of lecithin, and a multivitamin, for starters. But my brother Russell was an athlete, so he got two extra lecithins. My little brother Ron was allergic to milk, so he got a couple extra calcium tablets. I don't remember what was special about my own vitamin cup, because at the time I didn't care. I just knew that there were a lot of pills and capsules, that that sometimes it was fun to dump them out on the table and arrange them by color and size. If Mom wasn't looking, I could thump them across the table and try to hit my little brother with them, but if I got caught doing that or my brother complained the consequences were unpleasant.
Sugar cereals disappeared from my house long before I was ever diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8. The cereal shelf in our pantry, from the time I can remember, always held a box of Grape Nuts, a box of Raisin Bran, and a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Not Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, either: only the plain, boring corn flakes made it into my Mom's grocery cart. No artificial colors. No additives. No preservatives. No chocolaty goodness that turned your milk brown. In other words, no fun was allowed at our breakfast table, unless you counted the festive orange coating on the vitamin C pills that helped them glide across the table no nicely when thumped in the direction of a sibling.
From time to time, some well loved food would disappear from our kitchen to be replaced by something bizarre and unfamiliar. Like the pancake batter that ran out, only to be replaced by a dark-colored baking mix that my mother used to make everything from pancakes to muffins to cinnamon rolls. It actually tasted pretty good, and once you ate a few pancakes made from it you didn't need to eat anything else for the next 48 hours, because that is how long you felt full and bloaty afterward. My mother was also a budding environmentalist, and I remember the time I was helping her put away the groceries when I was 9 and I found a roll of brown paper towels made of unbleached, recycled paper.
"Oh my God," I exclaimed in mock horror, "even the paper towels are whole wheat now!"
My brothers all snickered, but I think it my mother's feelings, because we all got a lecture about how hard she tried to keep us healthy, and how little we all appreciated her for it.
As an adult, I've tried to eat healthy, but I've never tried hard enough to break a sweat. My nod to the nutritional values my mother tried to install in me was limited to eating wheat bread and drinking low fat milk. Then, somewhere along the line, I learned that the only thing worse for you than partially hydrogenated oil is fully hydrogenated oil, and that the best way to kill someone while avoiding murder charges is to feed them a steady diet of food fried in Crisco. Then I came across the theory that high-fructose corn syrup may be the real reason that the average American rear end takes up twice the amount of room on a sofa than it did a generation ago. I twisted around and looked at my own backside, and felt depressed. Worse, it's not just me these food additives may be killing. I'm a mother now, and I have an obligation not to feel poison to my growing son (no matter how much he begs for it).
Okay, I think, I will buy foods that have real sugar instead of partially hydrogenated corn syrup, and avoid anything with transfats. Simple, right? Except that these things are in almost every food for sale on the shelves of my grocery store.
In some cases, the substitution was easy; for pancake syrup, I now buy real maple syrup instead of the Hungry Jack in the microwavable bottle. My pocketbook is complaining about the cost, but I can't hear it groan over the song of rejoicing that my taste buds burst into with every taste of real maple syrup. But for things like ketchup and snack foods, almost every last one of them has either high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated something or other, or both in it. Even the stuff that looks healthy does. Chewy granola bars do. Most kinds of bread do. Even graham crackers (a staple in a toddler diet, by the way) have these things. Foods that say "No trans fats!" still have transfats in them (the fine print on the back of the box refutes what the large print on the front of the box proclaims, because the amount is less than what the government says they have to own up to).
As a result, I find myself buying a lot of organic junk food. All natural, additive and preservative free, full-of-wholesome-goodness junk food.
If my mother could only see me now, buying Back To Nature brand cookies that look like Oreos but taste like heaven, I know she'd be proud and annoyed.
"You buy those, but you can't remember to take a multivitamin every day?" she'd ask.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
* No, I don't mean by accident. That's not how we say it where I'm from. See the "Off Topic" thread below for an explanation.
The truth was, I was trying to incorporate more refined sugar in my son's diet, and organic junk food just turned out to be the easiest way to do that.
I grew up hating health food, because my mother was very into it. At some point in my childhood, she began reading books by dieticians, particularly one named Adelle Davis, whose books she could quote chapter and verse. Every morning at breakfast, every member of my family would find a little container (the plastic shot glasses off of cough syrup bottles, actually) full of vitamins. We each got at least a dozen little pills, each carefully selected for what my mother deemed to be our specific needs. We all got a bright orange Vitamin C, a little squishy yellow gel capsule of Vitamin E, a big dark amber gel capsule of lecithin, and a multivitamin, for starters. But my brother Russell was an athlete, so he got two extra lecithins. My little brother Ron was allergic to milk, so he got a couple extra calcium tablets. I don't remember what was special about my own vitamin cup, because at the time I didn't care. I just knew that there were a lot of pills and capsules, that that sometimes it was fun to dump them out on the table and arrange them by color and size. If Mom wasn't looking, I could thump them across the table and try to hit my little brother with them, but if I got caught doing that or my brother complained the consequences were unpleasant.
Sugar cereals disappeared from my house long before I was ever diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8. The cereal shelf in our pantry, from the time I can remember, always held a box of Grape Nuts, a box of Raisin Bran, and a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Not Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, either: only the plain, boring corn flakes made it into my Mom's grocery cart. No artificial colors. No additives. No preservatives. No chocolaty goodness that turned your milk brown. In other words, no fun was allowed at our breakfast table, unless you counted the festive orange coating on the vitamin C pills that helped them glide across the table no nicely when thumped in the direction of a sibling.
From time to time, some well loved food would disappear from our kitchen to be replaced by something bizarre and unfamiliar. Like the pancake batter that ran out, only to be replaced by a dark-colored baking mix that my mother used to make everything from pancakes to muffins to cinnamon rolls. It actually tasted pretty good, and once you ate a few pancakes made from it you didn't need to eat anything else for the next 48 hours, because that is how long you felt full and bloaty afterward. My mother was also a budding environmentalist, and I remember the time I was helping her put away the groceries when I was 9 and I found a roll of brown paper towels made of unbleached, recycled paper.
"Oh my God," I exclaimed in mock horror, "even the paper towels are whole wheat now!"
My brothers all snickered, but I think it my mother's feelings, because we all got a lecture about how hard she tried to keep us healthy, and how little we all appreciated her for it.
As an adult, I've tried to eat healthy, but I've never tried hard enough to break a sweat. My nod to the nutritional values my mother tried to install in me was limited to eating wheat bread and drinking low fat milk. Then, somewhere along the line, I learned that the only thing worse for you than partially hydrogenated oil is fully hydrogenated oil, and that the best way to kill someone while avoiding murder charges is to feed them a steady diet of food fried in Crisco. Then I came across the theory that high-fructose corn syrup may be the real reason that the average American rear end takes up twice the amount of room on a sofa than it did a generation ago. I twisted around and looked at my own backside, and felt depressed. Worse, it's not just me these food additives may be killing. I'm a mother now, and I have an obligation not to feel poison to my growing son (no matter how much he begs for it).
Okay, I think, I will buy foods that have real sugar instead of partially hydrogenated corn syrup, and avoid anything with transfats. Simple, right? Except that these things are in almost every food for sale on the shelves of my grocery store.
In some cases, the substitution was easy; for pancake syrup, I now buy real maple syrup instead of the Hungry Jack in the microwavable bottle. My pocketbook is complaining about the cost, but I can't hear it groan over the song of rejoicing that my taste buds burst into with every taste of real maple syrup. But for things like ketchup and snack foods, almost every last one of them has either high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated something or other, or both in it. Even the stuff that looks healthy does. Chewy granola bars do. Most kinds of bread do. Even graham crackers (a staple in a toddler diet, by the way) have these things. Foods that say "No trans fats!" still have transfats in them (the fine print on the back of the box refutes what the large print on the front of the box proclaims, because the amount is less than what the government says they have to own up to).
As a result, I find myself buying a lot of organic junk food. All natural, additive and preservative free, full-of-wholesome-goodness junk food.
If my mother could only see me now, buying Back To Nature brand cookies that look like Oreos but taste like heaven, I know she'd be proud and annoyed.
"You buy those, but you can't remember to take a multivitamin every day?" she'd ask.
* No, I don't mean by accident. That's not how we say it where I'm from. See the "Off Topic" thread below for an explanation.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 09:57 pm (UTC)Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 08:46 pm (UTC)I'm so glad someone else says it like this! I have been chastized my whole life that it should be "by accident." I don't get it. You either do something (lol, at first I typed "someone") on purpose or on accident. It's only logical.
Nevermind. Carry on like I never interrupted.
Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:03 pm (UTC)Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:04 pm (UTC)Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:28 pm (UTC)I was fixing to fix this, but I've changed my mind. :D
(
Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:33 pm (UTC)But yeah, that whole fixin' thing... that's something my dad's family always said. They're from Tennessee. ;)
Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:36 pm (UTC)I've heard that not all Southerners say "fixin to." I've always thought they should, though. I'm glad to hear the fine people of Tennessee are on board.
Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:45 pm (UTC)My grandmother was full of them.
Re: Off Topic
Date: 2008-02-26 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 09:03 pm (UTC)Of course, my mother was not as forward thinking as your mother. My mother bought the Lil Debbie cakes, crap cereals, and TV dinners that I now dread. It wasn't/isn't easy to get away from those, that's for sure...
no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 09:34 pm (UTC)We ate the stuff your mother bought when we went to our friend's houses. Gotta love Little Debbie.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 09:49 pm (UTC)B and I learned a lot about HCFS and PHOs when doing Atkins, well before most people were willing to accept it. We stopped telling people because they kept telling us we were crazy, etc. Whatever. ;)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 10:34 pm (UTC)lulz
*picks self off floor*
lulz!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-26 11:48 pm (UTC)My kids eat the gummy multivitamins...when I remember to buy them...and I take multivitamins...when I remember to take/buy them. Not often enough for myself.
My kids eat normal junk. Not on as grand a scale as some kids. I limit their intake of snacks and candy. I'm "mean" like that. The candy they get every year from parades, halloween and valentine's day lasts the whole year or more. I've thrown out boxes of candy that will never get eaten...
I guess it depends on the context of "by" or "on" accident. If it happened with outside sources? It's by accident. I got $50 by accident.
If you do it or your kid does it, it's on accident. She hit me on accident. But I'd never thought much of it before.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:43 pm (UTC)Of course the perfect sugary, fatty, kid-friendly snack is made by Mother Nature: the banana. Hopefully, no mad scientist is trying to grow them infused with partially hydrogenated corn syrup even as I type this. :P
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:47 pm (UTC)Bananas are usually eaten with meals here...that or oranges or apples. My kids love fruit!!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-27 03:47 pm (UTC)