Since I've written about either food &
grocery stores so far this week, how about if we combine the two
today?
Thanks for your indulgence.
If you've been reading these over the
years you may have picked up on the fact that, for the most part, I
try to eat well. 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.
So I try my best.
It may not, however, come as a surprise
that I have a food that's a guilty pleasure. It's a food that I
don't believe I've ever seen in a 'good” versions, and while I
don't eat it a lot I do savor the times when I break down and ingest
it. And that guilty pleasure is?
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. So when I noticed that two Marquette
grocery stores started selling freshly-made cornbread, I couldn't
resist, even though it means eating 1,500 calories of gunk that could
instead be used for healthy whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
But it's cornbread...and there's
something about cornbread that I just can't resist.
Anyway, the first grocery store started
selling it when they remodeled a year or so ago, and I have to admit
I partook of it a little more than I should have. Then I did
something else I probably shouldn't have, and that's read the
ingredients list they stuck on the back of the container. I noticed
that instead of sugar the store uses high fructose corn syrup, which
is something I try to avoid at all costs. So for a few months, I had
to live without cornbread.
It was hard.
Then a few weeks ago we were at a
recently opened grocery store, and I noticed they had a slab of
cornbread for sale. 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
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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