Archive for April 8th, 2010

• Day 40: Today was Hard

  Date: 2010.04.08 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 1

  So I’m on a business retreat for a project I’m working on…. we’re staying at the CEO’s villa in the Var, a region in the south of France just east of Nice.

  (Brangelina has a home nearby in the Var, outside the town of Correns.)

  The home is in this beautiful isolated countryside. And do you know that everyone in the U.S. thinks living in the south of France is such a dream that I have no right to ever complain?

  Screw that.  We worked as a team for a couple hours.  Then one of the principals broke out the snacks.  Which included chocolate chip cookies.

  I ask you:  Is there a more perfect food on this earth than chocolate chip cookies?

  She brought along rice cakes and almond butter for me, mindful of the world-famous blog, A Year Without Candy.

  But when I saw the package the chocolate chip cookies were housed in, I felt wistful and wanting.

  Fuck this self-denial. I hate it.

  I don’t want rice cakes and almond butter.

  I want chocolate chip cookies.

  I only have this one life – as far as I know.

  Why should I suffer?  I haven’t lost enormous amounts of weight in these 40 days. I’m not a “brand-new person.”

  Today was hard.

  It got harder.

  We broke for lunch and went to this bad Thai restaurant in the town of Caillan.

  It was Thai food served cafeteria style.

  They heated it up in a microwave.

  It so sucked.

  Plus my friends/colleagues had all these American-style desserts like tiramisu and chocolate doughnuts.

  I was still hungry after I ate my suck-ass, half-baked (literally) spicy rice and mushroom chicken.

  My friends ordered tiramisu. I didn’t. (See also: this fucking blog.)

  “Oops, ooohh, sorry,” they said a little too gleefully, even though I assured them this:

  I like to watch.

  Oh yes I do – if I can’t be the one eating the dessert, I like to watch.

  But it was depressing.

  I wanted dessert.

  Dessert to me takes the edge off life.

  Without dessert…

  Life sucks.

  Ta,

  The Bitter, Miserable, Landlocked Swimming Piglet in the Var

  

• Day 40: OMG! Look What Has Sugar In It!

  Date: 2010.04.08 | Category: Scary Motivation! | Response: 2

  Shocking: Sugar Content of Common Food Products

  By Daryo Pino, Huffington Post

  Refined sugars and high-fructose corn syrup are considered by many experts to be the biggest contributors to obesity and poor health in Western civilization.

  In her book What To Eat, Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at NYU and blogger at Food Politics suggests that any food that contains more than 15 grams of sugar per serving is closer to dessert than anything else. Though this number is arbitrary, it is a good benchmark for evaluating food products.

  Obviously sugar content is not the only factor in a food’s nutritional value (and not all of these have added sugar), but it can be illuminating to see the relative amounts in the foods we consume.

  Just for fun I looked up the sugar content of a few common foods and menu items. I hope you’re as horrified as I am.

  Listed values are as close to a normal serving as I could approximate. Units are listed as grams of sugar.

  Sugar Content of Common Food Products

  1. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut …………………………………………………10 g

  2. Luna Bar berry almond …………………………………………………………………………11 g

  3. Froot Loops breakfast cereal 3/4 cup ……………………………………………………12 g

  4. Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream ……………………………………………………………16 g

  5. Starbucks caffè latte grande 16 oz …………………………………………………………17 g

  6. Godiva 2 truffles ………………………………………………………………………………….17 g

  7. Subway 6″ sweet onion teriyaki chicken sandwich ………………………………..17 g

  8. Ms. Field’s chocolate chip cookie ………………………………………………………….19 g

  9. Tropicana 100% orange juice 8 oz …………………………………………………………25 g

  10. Yoplait original yogurt ………………………………………………………………………27 g

  11. Craisins dried cranberries 1/3 cup ……………………………………………………….29 g

  12. Vitamin Water 20 oz bottle ………………………………………………………………….33 g

  13. Oscar Mayer Lunchables crackers, turkey & American cheese ……………….36 g

  14. Coca-Cola Classic 12 oz can …………………………………………………………………..39 g

  15. Sprinkles Cupcake red velvet ………………………………………………………………..45 g

  16. California Pizza Kitchen Thai chicken salad ……………………………………………45 g

  17. Jamba Juice blackberry bliss 16 oz ……………………………………………………….49 g

  18. Odwalla SuperFood 450 ml bottle …………………………………………………………50 g

  19. Starbucks caffe vanilla frappuccino grande 16 oz …………………………………..58 g

  Take home messages:

  * Foods we recognize as dessert (e.g. doughnuts, ice cream, cookies) often have far less sugar than things we consider “healthy” (e.g. juice, yogurt, dried fruit).

  * Froot Loops aren’t necessarily better than doughnuts.

  * Energy bars are glorified candy.

  * Dessert is sometimes hidden in things like sandwiches.

  * Some foods marketed to children aren’t much better than soda.

  * A salad can have as much sugar as one of the biggest cupcakes I’ve ever seen.

  * “Natural” foods can have lots of sugar.

  * The worst offenders are drinkable.

  * Starbucks is why you’re fat.

  Darya is a scientist, foodie and advocate of local, seasonal foods. For more healthy eating tips visit her blog Summer Tomato. You can also connect with Darya on Twitter @summertomato and Facebook.