Originally published on the Huffington Post on April 15,2016 By Kelly Wilson. An author and comedian in Portland, Oregon who entertains and inspires with stories of humor, healing, and hope.
A host of good intentions can be found in the refrigerator. That lettuce intended for a healthy salad is now a soupy mess in the crisper. The cucumber to be cut up and eaten as a snack? Half-rotten on the second shelf. The lone apple, passed over time and again? Bruised and neglected in the far back corner of the fridge.
That piece of cake from the baby shower attended last weekend? Eaten in the car on the way home.
When it comes to food, we lie so hard that our pants are routinely on fire. Food is the center of our existence, needed for survival and providing satisfaction on top of sustenance throughout each day. There is not one single element in life that is more rationalized that the food that we believe we will – or will not – eat. To celebrate April as National Food Month and National Humor Month, here are nine common and entertaining food lies that we like to tell ourselves.
I Can Only Eat Just One
The “It won’t happen to me” myth can be disproven with one bag of chips. When Lay’s Potato Chips came out with the “Bet you can’t eat just one!” ad campaign, many of us took it as a personal dare. Not only can I not eat just one, but I can eat the whole bag in one sitting!
Now that our waistlines have expanded and we are worried about developing Type II diabetes, we want the enjoyment of chips (or cookies, or crackers) without the consequences. We lie so hard, telling ourselves that we can buy a bag of chips and only eat one. Or two. Or five. Or just a serving size. Pretty soon, the bag is gone in a greasy tornado of ecstasy.
This Bag is One Serving
There is no disappointment so great as realizing what an ounce or a serving of any food looks like. A serving of cheese is supposed to be the size of a thumb, and not the thumb of the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. When we realize that we can’t eat a leg’s worth of cheese as a serving, life gets harder real quick.
The same is true for a serving of chips, which can fit into the palm of a hand and is not, in fact, the whole bag. Or a serving of cookies, which is apparently only two of the globs of goodness that are approximately the size of quarters and not the circumference of our heads.
The Crumbs Don’t Count
Crumbs are a sometimes overlooked benefit to snack foods coming in bags. Our favorite sugary, greasy, fatty foods come in packages that allow the excess to shake or slough off, leaving a trail of crumbs along the bottom of the boxes or bags.
Because the crumbs are not attached, they are easy to rationalize as being free of those pesky calories that we try to control each day. We drink them from the package, creating tracks so the crumbs race into our open mouths like bobsledders at the Winter Olympics. There was no truth so devastating as the person who weighed out the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of chips and discovered that they weighed as much as a serving size.
I’ll Take Half of This Meal Home
This lie is one of the most popular when it comes to eating in restaurants. We may ask for a to-go box at the beginning of the meal. We may even place half of our meal in said box.
The box becomes an enemy. Its flaps don’t even stay closed. The box is daring you to put it in the refrigerator and eat the rest of that pasta for lunch the next day. Who can possibly resist that temptation to show the box who’s boss?
I’ll Work This Off Today
A co-worker brought in a sticky, sugary, glazed coffee cake. The vending machine only had Snickers bars left. The boss brought in pizza for lunch to celebrate a big sale.
Pretty soon, the buttons on everyone’s pants are popping like champagne corks on New Year’s Eve, and it’s only one-thirty in the afternoon.
Still, that hopeful voice of good intentions breaks through the fog of sugar and carbs to chirp, “We can stop by the gym after work! We can take a walk after dinner!” And we believe it, forgetting that the bar on the way to the gym has unlimited tacos for only three dollars during happy hour, which is where we will end up at approximately 5:20.
I Can Have Ice Cream in the House and Not Eat It
This is a popular lie with parents. The kids want ice cream, so parents buy brands and flavors that they believe will not tempt them.
Have you ever met an ice cream flavor you couldn’t eat?
Even if it’s Chocolate Adjacent (with artificial flavors) made by the Toilet Water Ice Cream Company, we’re going to eat it.
Chocolate is a Vegetable
I’m not even sure this is a lie. Chocolate is a bean. It comes from a pod. It’s grown in a field in exotically warm temperatures. It’s basically a banana, but it’s a vegetable. It’s a vegetable banana. And dark chocolate is good for you.
A Glass of Wine is a Serving of Fruit
Wine, when paired with chocolate, creates a perfectly balanced meal of vegetable and fruit. Wine is made from grapes, and there are locally-sourced varieties that support our surrounding communities. It is fermented, and has probiotics, which makes it good for our guts.
In fact, chocolate and wine together are so good for us, it would be morally wrong not to have them for dinner. Right?
Follow Kelly Wilson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KW_Writes
