Published Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:29 PM
Updated Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:30 PM
Jalapeno peppers spread salmonella, chicken is chock-full o’ chemicals, and just opening a can of Crisco will kill you.
I gave up red meat (growth hormones) years ago, then biscuits, potato chips and gravy (trans fats), and finally my beloved cream of chicken soup (sodium.) I sulked about the soup for weeks.
According to several nutrition Web sites, we also shouldn’t eat:
• Pepperidge Farm Chicken Pot Pie: Half a pie = 510 calories and 9 grams of fat.
• McDonald’s Chicken Breast Strips: Five strips have 630 calories and 11 grams of fat.
• The Cheesecake Factory’s 6 Carb Original Cheesecake: One piece packs 610 calories and 29 grams of saturated fat.
• Marie Callender’s Roasted Chicken with Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli and Carrots: 530 calories, 12 grams of fat and 1,270 mg of sodium.
• Mrs. Fields Milk Chocolate & Walnut cookie: One cookie = 300 calories and as much saturated fat as a 12-ounce sirloin steak. (Say what?)
• Starbucks Venti Strawberries & Creme Frappuccino: 1 cup = 770 calories and 19 grams of fat.
• Burger King French Fries: One biggie fries = 600 calories.
• Haagen-Dazs Mint Chip Dazzler: 1,270 calories and a whopping 38 grams of saturated fat.
The flip-flop is what frustrates me. Coffee is bad; whoops, coffee is good. Chocolate is bad, except when it benefits your heart. Booze will kill you… but red wine rejuvenates your body. Dairy will rot your digestive tract, but in Russia 100-year-old peasants eat yogurt twice a day.
Two decades ago, experts said salt was only slightly less dangerous than arsenic. I immediately threw out my saltshaker.
In 11 years of marriage, my ex-husband never saw a grain of salt, which may have explained his chronic crankiness. Even after we divorced, I stuck with Mrs. Dash. Salt was bad. Salt was evil.
Then, in 1998, the tide shifted: New research said eliminating iodized salt was a no-no. Salt, used judiciously, did a body good.
For me, the news was too late: I still won’t buy salt, which drives my current husband, Widdle Baby, completely crazy. (If he divorces me, I‘m suing the American Medical Association.)
What finally kicked me over the edge was the egg ban. I love eggs, scrambled, soft-boiled, fried, poached and deviled. But back in the 80s, nutritionists said eggs packed enough cholesterol to derail a train. They recommended eating no more than one egg per week.
One egg is pitiful. One egg won’t even bake a cake. But I didn’t want to die, so I cut out eggs. Couple years later, it turned out that eating a few eggs a week wouldn’t hurt a healthy person at all.
That was the last straw. I fried and ate seven eggs, then decided I might as well die face-down in a pool of brownie batter, with a pork chop in my gravy-smeared hand.
That mindset was brief. Now I’m back to worrying about what goes in my body.
These days I eat mostly organic egg whites, vegetables and whole grains. I long for Captain Crunch and fried fatback, but the guilt isn’t worth it.
Occasionally, after a glass of wine, I’ll throw caution to the wind and crunch a pretzel.
Let the good times roll.
Julie R. Smith, who’s begun biting her nails again, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.