Sad to say, if I do have a guilty pleasure food, is might very well be cornbread.
Yesterday, I had mentioned that one of the items we threw in our Thanksgiving dish was cornbread stuffing, and that caused one of you to drop me a note mentioning that I don't really seem like a cornbread type of individual. But it's true; it's one of those dark secrets about me that seems to sneak out every so often.
Even though it's not the best food for you, I really do like cornbread, whether it's fresh or in stuffing.
If you've read these over the years, you know I try to avoid fast foods, overly processed foods, and foods that aren't really “foods”, foods that are just made up of chemicals and additives and shaped to look like “food”. Even the “bad' things I eat, like chocolate, are the “good” versions of the food (you know, dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate).
But not necessarily cornbread.
Yup; I know I don't seem like a cornbread-loving kind of person, but I am. I know it's not good for me; it's basically a grain with all the good stuff removed combined with sugar and a bunch of fatty oils, but there's just something about it that I can't resist. Several years ago I noticed a couple of Marquette grocery stores started selling freshly-made cornbread and it was something I couldn't pass by, even though it meant eating 1,500 calories of gunk that could instead be replaced by healthy whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
But it's cornbread...and there's something about cornbread that I just can't resist.
Anyway, I've been getting the cornbread from one of grocery stores on and off and I did something I probably shouldn't have. I read the ingredients list they stuck on the back of the container, and I noticed that instead of sugar the store uses high fructose corn syrup, which is something I try to avoid at all costs. So I had to live without cornbread from that particular store.
Luckily, there's another grocery store that sells cornbread they make in-house. They make theirs with sugar, which obviously meant that I had to buy it and try it out, just to see if it was any different than the cornbread I'd previously been eating. A larger than usual (gulp) one pound container of calories later I was totally satisfied, not only by the cornbread but by the fact that it had real sugar in it. Sure, I had just eaten around 2,000 calories, but at least those calories didn't include high fructose corn syrup.
Yes, I know I need help. What's your point?
Thankfully, I don't eat cornbread all that often. If I ate it every time I felt like it, I have the feeling I'd be adding another 20 or 30 pounds to my 160-pound frame. Besides, can you imagine what all that processed grain and fully saturated fat would do to a body not used to it? I shudder to think. However, I am human, and I do have the occasional temptation. So if you ever run into me in a grocery store and you happen to see one of those one-pound bricks of cornbread in my cart, realize it's not part of my everyday diet.
It's just a guilty pleasure.
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