Something out there scares me a little though. It scares me when we label certain foods 'good' or 'bad'. Certainly, it is exceedingly easy to become addicted to carbohydrates, processed sugars, and processed foods. I can say that I have been addicted and am working out of it. What scares me is that we have begun to teach children that everything with sugar is bad. I don't think this is true. I think it is a matter of perspective.
On a side note, I do think some things are just plain bad. Like corn syrup. Or aspartame. Or Splenda. Or margarine. Or the thing the grocery store tries to call beef that looks nothing like the beef that comes from my uncle. But I digress.
The other day, I was babysitting at a friend's house. My friend, who is a FANTASTIC mother, told me that at her daughter's Valentine's party at school there was no 'bad food'. She was excited about this. I, too, obviously get it. It is awesome to have a party at a school on a holiday and have people actually bring vegetables. That completely rocks. I love that these kids were being taught that 'party' can mean 'veggies' or 'cheese and crackers'. (Now the crackers probably had corn syrup and maybe even the dip for the veggies, but again, I digress).
What scares me is the underlying assumption that having a sugar cookie with powdered sugar frosting that is shaped like a heart is 'bad'. Do I think it would be bad to have 5 of them at the party? Yes. Do I think it is bad for a child to have one cookie at a party that is pretty and yummy? No. I don't necessarily think my friend believes this. In fact, I know she doesn't. It is more about the mass marketing of the thing.
Once we teach kids that some foods are good and some are bad, then they want to be sneaky with the bad foods. They want to gorge on them because they don't know when they will come again. Don't we all?
I am all for vegetables. We eat more of a vast variety of vegetables in this house than most people have ever seen. We eat varieties of meat that most people aren't lucky enough to have. And, once in awhile, we have cake. Or cookies. It isn't often, (well, okay, lately it IS, but we're working on it) but sometimes, it is fun to bake something decadent. It is glorious to realize that with my mixer and the right ingredients I can make an extremely fluffy and beautiful whole wheat cake that tastes so good it should be illegal to own the recipe because I want to bake it all the time.
Would it be bad to eat this cake every day? Sure.
But is my cake a 'bad food'? Hell no. My cake is a beautiful work of baking art. I take pictures when I make this cake. And I make sure to enjoy the cake with friends or family. This cake is about sharing, it isn't about hoarding. And I just can't see that as bad.
I get scared when things are labeled good or bad. Because you know what? There is solid science that PROVES that unsaturated things are bad and saturated fats are good. Saturated fats are the kind your brain needs to be able to function. People have linked not having saturated fats to the reason why kids can't function well in school. They aren't getting what they needed because they are eating chemically-laden fake butters and oils that shouldn't be inside their little systems. Or sugar that isn't sugar, but is a chemical concoction created by some factory and we don't know what the crap is in it, but apparently it is healthy. So we use a lot of it? I just don't get it.
I'd much rather have my beautiful cake with real sugar every once in awhile. And enjoy it. And not feel guilty at all. Because I eat my vegetables and my good proteins too. A lot of them.
8 comments:
I'm not saying that Soda will ever be "good" for you, but on Clarissa's and my honeymoon, we went to a few restaurants and I always ordered the sprite as my drink. I couldn't figure it out but something about the soda there tasted REALLY good. At first I thought it was the water or something else. But then Clarissa looked at the ingredients. guess what WASN'T on the list? High Fructose Corn syrup! Instead, what was on there was sugar, just plain, good ol' sugar. Everything that simply has sugar in it and no other "sweetners" typically tastes so much better to me. I guess this is more in response to the syrupy taste that we find in most of our foods in America. I wish we could stop using so much corn in the food we process. I even discovered not to long ago that even the bottled water we find in our stores actually has smidges of corn product in them.ugh!
Jimmy - I totally know. Corn is EVERYWHERE and so is wheat. Because they are subsidized. And it ticks me off. I didn't know that about water - but it is GROSS.
this is the sad thing about food/losing weight in my life right now. i weighed myself after a month of working out/eating better & to my shock i had actually lost 6 pounds!!! then i weighed myself yesterday, 3 weeks later, after a week of being sick, losing my job, and going on vacation far away. i had gained it all back. oh what stress will do to you- even good stress! and even though i was exercising still, and walking at least a mile, if not more, every day on vacation!! lets not forget no matter how healthy a person is, stress plays a huge factor in weight gain, especially for females. it's natural biology...being stressed makes our bodies think that a famine is coming per 1000 years ago evolutionarily speaking, and therefore our bodies (well most of us) naturally put on weight. its not a justification, but a good thing to remember also. oh yeah, and all our foods are processed too, which of course doesn't help in the matter. all you can do is try your best, and remember skinny doesn't always equal healthy ;) I can count on my hands the people i would sit by at work who were a size two, and ate their entire days food/drink from a vending machine. but they were skinny, so no one cared. <-- that way of thinking always bothers me. oh the world we live in.
I totally get what you are saying, but it IS bad for you and me. Cookies are bad for you, so you shouldn't eat much of them. So I do put food in columns bad/good and I can only eat so much per week. Whatever, BUT I don't think it's BAD to have cookies at a Valentine's Party. A veggie V'Day party sounds ridiculously boring. bah. I don't have any problems with labels though. Carrots are good. Cake is bad. It sure does taste heavenly though.
I can appreciate where you're coming from on the last comment made, but I have to say I disagree. I think it's all about everything in moderation, and whose body the "bad" or "good" food is going into. For example, my grandmother is a survivor of Pancreatic cancer. Because of all the surgery she had, she can no longer digest most vegetables. It's really kind of sad, to be honest. She used to love eating salads. But now, eating carrots will make her sick. Eating a piece of cake- well that's a piece of cake! Her body can easily digest that. So obviously she has to find nutrients in otherways, and take lots of vitamins and supplements. And Alaina's whole wheat cake is a whole different ball game than some "Hostess" variety.
Doesn't matter if she CAN eat cake, it is STILL bad for her. And whole wheat cake makes a cake healthier but not healthy. And when I had gall bladder surgery I had to follow a strict diet and though I couldn't eat sweet potatoes, so even if they were BAD for me, they aren't BAD, they are still good and healthy, just not at that time. Cake is NEVER nutrient rich for your body. Ever.
La, I definitely get what you are saying. Cake isn't necessarily good for you or anything. I do think there are ways to make it healthier and it is acceptable to eat it once in awhile, which was my point with the cake I make. Friends are necessary because then you only get one slice! :) My bigger problem is with teaching children that certain foods are 'bad'. I think the label makes us, as humans, want the thing that is bad - especially kids who are still not able to have the reasoning skills. So I think teaching them moderation is a really good thing and only make sweets available once in a while is great. But my friend is teaching her child that sugar is 'bad' and it is making her child want sugar all the time and her child cries when she eats a cookie because she thinks mom will be mad at her. That just isn't good at all.
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