Diet food must die

While talking on the phone today to Beth, we were comparing notes on healthy and not so healthy choices for eating in order to achieve the invisible and unattainable nirvana of 'the perfect weight'.

Personally, I'd settle for weighing less than my deep freezer.

But, have you noticed that if it is labeled 'diet' in any way, the manufacturers are COMPELLED to make it inedible, thus rendering your money wasted and your taste buds murdered by the fiendish combinations of 'flavors' that are alleged to be just like the real thing.

For there record: cholesterol free, fat free, non-cheese shreds substitute is only useful to replace the tread on your old, comfortable tennis shoes. The flavor was nothing like the cheddar cheese Mom used to buy and the stuff didn't melt. I don't mean a little. I mean NONE. The little shreds of what had to be orange rubber just lay there atop the 'nutritious' casserole I was making that was certain to shave off the pounds, remove cholesterol from my arteries and restore youth and vigor to my body.

GROSS! I couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough!

I lost weight that night, but most assuredly it was not in the way I had intended. So much for cheeseless cheese.

Some time later, in the ongoing attempt I am making to reduce my body beyond heavyweight contention, I made the youthful mistake of getting a box of cereal that was advertised as a diet cereal that was 'oh so yummy'. Okay, I'll play along. I didn't pay anything for the alleged cereal since I had a coupon for a trial box and figured smugly that I was doing something good for both body and wallet.

Wrong on both counts.

I would have PAID somebody to slap the spoon out of my hand if it would remove the nasty taste from my offended palate!

Coming from the box, the cereal (and I use the term loosely here) resembling nothing so much as some sun dried worms. It looked nothing like the cheerful berry bedecked bowl full of nutrition that the box indicated was inside.

I think the worms would have tasted better, berries or not.

I dumped the remaining offending contents across the lawn out back. I figured the wild animals would eat it. Apparently even wild animals have standards and this cereal was CLEARLY not within the parameters of edible material. I should have consulted them first.

It took TWO mowings before the giblets were sufficiently chopped up to disappear into the thatch of grass clippings on the lawn.

Maybe that is the mistake. I should skip the shopping altogether and simply eat the grass clippings that accumulate in the grass catcher. They are free, when in season, and the decidedly oily taste from the mower would certainly reduce my desire to eat much of them and, in no time at all, I could be svelte, sexy and below double digit dress sizes.

Okay. STOP laughing. We both know double digits will ALWAYS be part of my future in clothing. I'd just like it if the first of the two numbers was a one. I know for a fact that there will never be a single digit because I have an ongoing love affair with food that will never end as long as I live.

Come to think about it, that is why I live some days. It's for the food. I know the old saying that you should 'Eat to live, not live to eat.' If food didn't taste so good and if I weren't a reasonably good cook, maybe I would like lettuce more. Or any rabbit food for that matter.

Since I know there must be some catalyst for the blame game, I will blame it all on the unhealthy preoccupation with beauty that led me to this sorry state of affairs. If I were a grizzly bear, my fat rolls would be considered desirable by the all the males in search of a winter home.

Sadly, I lack the ability to shape shift and I fear that even given the ability to do so, would somehow become the fattest hummingbird in recorded history. There is nothing so sad as a hummingbird who can't reach the nectar feeder. The other birds would point their wings and laugh, making rude comments about the size of my tail feathers and I'd be forced to stravage along on the leavings in cans and bottles that litter our roadways.

I guess the real issue here is finding something that has the word 'diet' somewhere in the description that doesn't make you focus solely on the first three letters.

For now, I guess the new rule of thumb needs to be 'if it tastes good, spit it out'. That brings up another disgusting habit, but at least I would be thinner.