8 February 2012
The Super Bowl is one time of year when I unabashedly eat low-quality junk (trust me, it’s not the only time). What do I mean by “low-quality”? Mostly cheap chain food that’s been prepared in huge quantities to be consumed in, well… huge quantities.
This year, we ordered Chicken Parmesan pizza from Jet’s, wings from Champp’s, and then my man got me what I call movie nachos — just cheese sauce and tortilla chips — because he knows I love them.
Let me tell you something: You can make real, high-quality nachos with homemade or similar chips, shredded marinated chicken, seasoned beans, expensive cheese, lettuce, tomato, guacamole (I could keep going), and they WILL taste good. They’ll taste amazing. I love those kind of nachos too.
But to me, there’s something about that cheap queso-esque cheese over plain store-bought tortilla chips that really hits the spot in a way that real deal nachos just don’t.
So I get that there are some foods that, no matter how nutritionally abyssal or chock full of chemical additives, people just love (as the author of The End of Overeating would argue, they were designed to be not just loved but obsessed over).
The cheap foods we just can’t get enough of — despite having access to higher quality options — are designed to be addicting. That much is clear. So I don’t recommend making them a regular, everyday part of your diet. But if you’d often rather have a cheap burger from the greasy diner down the street than a homemade grilled one made from top sirloin and seasoned to perfection, I can understand why.
That’s why it’s so important to make a list of the foods you really love and own it. Don’t feel guilty about your list for one second. You might love cheap burgers because when you were growing up, your dad took you to get one every time you ran errands with him on the weekend. Or maybe you just genuinely love the taste… That’s okay, too.
I recommend making the low-quality foods a part of your life in a very intentional way. First, make a list of the ones you love and the ones you’re just “meh” about. Then, decide on a reasonable number of those kind of treats you’d like to have in a given month (once a week? Twice a week? What seems reasonable but also won’t prevent you from reaching your goals?). Finally, make sure you can eat those foods without going totally overboard every time you try.
I know I can seem like a big food snob, and sometimes, I am. But I appreciate the allure of low-quality foods because sometimes they hit the spot in a way nothing else can. There’s no reason to fully eliminate movie nachos, candy bars, or chain food from our lives completely; we just have to be very intentional about how we eat it.
Which “low-quality” foods do you crave?
25 January 2012
Recently, Mary presented me with three common happy hour options and asked a simple question: Which is healthier? I’ve written about how to have a healthy happy hour before, but this seemed like a fun and challenging happy hour dilemma to tackle. Here are the choices Mary gave me:
- Glass of wine and a bread basket with olive oil at an Italian restaurant
- Sliders and light beer at a sports bar
- Skinny margarita with chips and salsa at a Mexican Restaurant
First let’s establish portion size. I went with 3 5-oz. glasses of red wine and 3 smaller pieces of crusty white bread with 1/2 tbsp olive oil for the Italian restaurant, 4 small sliders and 3 12-oz. light beers for the sports bar, and 25 chips + 6 tablespoons salsa and 3 skinny margaritas for the Mexican restaurant.
The first thing most people would probably be tempted to do is look at the calorie count for each of these options. You might be surprised to know that the approximate calorie counts for each happy hour pick are pretty similar: around 850 for the Italian restaurant, 745 for the sports bar, and 745 for the Mexican restaurant. Yes, you could save around 100 calories by avoiding the Italian option, but calorie count isn’t telling us much here.
So let’s go beyond calories, since I don’t think they tell the full health story anyway. The Italian happy hour choice not only has the most calories, but it also has the most carbs by far — around 95g compared to 50g for the sliders and beer and only 35g for the Mexican meal. But that low carb count in the Mexican happy hour might be due to some artificial sweetener in the margaritas — and I definitely don’t think artificial sweetener is healthy. But if you don’t want your blood sugar to spike, stay away from the Italian happy hour with all that bread! White bread has pretty much no redeeming nutritional qualities anyway.
Looking at protein, the sports bar meal packs the most punch, with 30g compared to 16g in the Italian meal and 11g in the Mexican meal. The sports bar meal also has the most fat (presumably from the burgers), which you all know I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. No, the beef in those sliders is probably not very high quality, but the fat will still be more filling.
If I had to give a final verdict, my vote goes to the sliders and beer. It will be far more filling than either of the other options because of the protein and fat. If you want to kick the health factor up a notch, eat your sliders open-face and cut back to two beers. That brings the calorie count down to around 545 and the carb count down to 20g.
If you can mix and match, go with 1-2 glasses of red wine (a healthier option than beer) with 2-3 open-faced sliders. That’s around 400 calories, 15g carbs, and 15g protein. It would also be pretty satisfying because of the protein/fat, and keep you from walking away feeling bloated. Not a bad option!
3 January 2012
Happy 2012! I made a conscious choice not to make any resolutions this year. In the past, I’ve made super specific resolutions and really vague ones, and I truly don’t think either method helps me focus or change my behavior at all. Instead of resolutions, I like to equip myself with tools to change habits I want to change and create a better, healthier life for myself. Inspired by some of my favorite posts from 2011, here are some tools to equip yourself with in 2012.
- Eat things you love, not things you feel “meh” about.
- Have some new books on hand to learn more about how food works in your body.
- Learn more about your local organic farmers.
- Find out why you’re probably not eating enough of some of the most delicious, healthiest foods on earth (coconut milk, avocado, and sweet potato, among others).
- Learn what you can do for your health every single day.
- Educate yourself about why trans fat is such bad news.
- Ban food-related guilt.
- Redefine treats.
- Have a plan for when the inevitable slump hits.
- Read my tips for making cooking more fun.
