What’s the bad advice? I’ll quote two statements (actually imperatives) from the back of the bag: “Snack Often with Our Guilt-Free Ancient Grain Chips!” and “great for all day snacking.” What’s the good source? This locally-owned company, Soloman Baking Co., that produces a range of pita bread and pita chips. My mother-in-law had bought a bag of their chips on sale and boy, were they good! I liked them so much that I bought a dozen bags online. (Small bags.) But here’s the thing: they’re very tempting just to eat on their own, and their overwhelming encouragement on the bag is to eat the chips as snacks. I’ve eaten two of the bags, I think, and while I’ve tried to eat them as an adjunct to a meal probably most of them were eaten between meals–the dreaded s-n-a-a-a-a-a-a-c-k-s. I plan to use the rest of the crackers as part of a concert reception and use them up that way. They’re just too tempting! (I normally buy chips and crackers to use for parties in mega-bags at Costco, and these smaller bags cost way more per ounce than I’d normally pay, but that’s life.)
And here’s where the main idea of this website kicks in: using food as a snack, just something to put in your mouth and crunch it, is not a proper, a respectful, use of food. It’s food as mouth entertainment. Because snack food is so available, and so cheap, and so lacking in any need for preparation, we just consume it mindlessly. It’s there all the time.
One idea that we’ve lost sight of is the principle of food intake and activity level being calibrated. I got to thinking about this idea last Sunday. I wouldn’t say that Sundays are big activity days. First up is breakfast, and for many years we’ve had something called a Dutch baby pancake, a big puffy oven pancake. Recently I’ve started making it with apples. Really, really great–and quite a few calories. I’m not going to come up with a figure, but we’ll just say a lot. Then I go to church, which involves mostly sitting unless I happen to be in the nursery that day. Then Jim and I usually go out for lunch with my in-laws, and while I try to get something small it’s probably fair to say that I haven’t burned up all that many calories since breakfast. We get lunch fairly late, probably 1:00, and we tend to sit and talk for quite awhile. Then I immediately start thinking about making pizza for dinner. I’m still on my quest to make the perfect pizza crust, with an emphasis on being able to get the toppings-heavy pizza that’s the same size as the pizza stone onto said stone without disaster, producing a crust with a crisp outside and chewy inside and no doughiness and no hard, overbaked bottom. Other than the pizza-making endeavors, though, my Sunday afternoons aren’t very active, I try (there’s that word again) to eat just one regular-sized piece, but if my efforts have been especially successful I tend to eat two.
So, especially now that the weather is getting warmer, I need to get myself out for a walk on Sundays. I’m having foot surgery on Monday, so it would be a really good idea for me to get in some healthy activity tomorrow as I’ll be on the couch for at least a week after that. I spent yesterday mostly on my feet, either in the kitchen, making items for the reception last night after the Cherry Creek Chorale’s concert (which was ab-so-lute-ly wonderful), then stood up and sang, then circulated at the party, then helped clean up afterwards and load up the car. I staggered home (figuratively speaking–I actually drove) and fell into bed, not getting up until almost 9:00 this morning. So I’m not planning on an exercise session today, but tomorrow is another story.
Well, I have much more to say about our terrible, awful snacking habits, but I’ll stop for now. I’d encourage you, though, to take a look at your pantry: what’s in here that has as its only purpose to be mindlessly crunched?