Stop the insanity!

Do you remember that phrase? I don't mean from George's dad on Seinfeld, but from that crazy-ass, platinum buzz-cut sporting Susan Powter (at left) circa 1992. She was the voice of a movement, the movement to delude yourself you are eating healthfully by consuming mass quantities of reduced fat and no fat foods in lieu of sensible portions of normal chow. She was my savior. You know I loves me some food so when I found an eating philosophy that allowed me to stuff my pie-hole with (sadly, not pie) anything low in fat I was in hog heaven, literally. Why then, I wondered, did my shorts feel tight if my fat consumption for the day was under ten percent? Well, when just your afternoon snack consists of a whole box of Snackwells Devil's Food cookies - at 50 calories a piece, 12 in a box - you do the math. It adds up to some serious poundage.

This trend definitely played upon the insecurities of a twenty year-old and I became obsessed with eating this way. We all know now the emperor has no clothes and it's the number of calories you eat and burn that determine weight gain or loss, although those poor Atkins schmucks haven't realized it yet, but I'd like to take a trip down memory lane and think about the ridiculous foods that used to make up my "diet" at the time. So this Friday...

My Top 5 Favorite Low-fat/Non-fat foods from the Early 90's

5. Pasta - The early nineties were the hey-day for pasta lovers. It's low-fat as long as you prepare it with a low-fat non-oil based sauce. My poor, poor Hubby. We were still just dating at the time so it's a miracle he stuck with me. He was learning to cook and was really excited about it. So I imagine I must have been as fun as wet blanket as I stood behind him monitoring the amount of oil he put in his dishes. He was so kind not to scream at me, "It wouldn't matter how much oil I put in if you didn't eat a whole damn pound of pasta!"

4. Frozen Yogurt - I was so obsessed with the frozen yogurt machine in my dorm cafeteria, it was like Christmas morning when I would discover the flavor of the day was peanut butter. I remember one day in particular, the menu board listed the flavor of the day as such and I ran to the station, cereal bowl in hand (screw those little dessert bowls, it's low-fat!) only to to be handed a bowl of strawberry. After consoling me about the error, the lovely, townie, food service worker explained as soon as the strawberry was done they would be changing it to peanut butter. Sigh. Fifteen minutes later, as I'm sitting stewing over a salad with no-fat dressing, she comes running into the dining room calling out, "Where's Mary?" holding giant bowl of peanut butter yogurt. I still tear up at the memory. Sweet lady.

Frozen yogurt has seen some hard times lately. TCBY, what happened to you? You were the place to be in 1992. Any August night would find your storefront lined with women waiting to get thirty-two ounces of non-fat goodness topped with fat-free hot fudge, and granola (which we later found to be a wolf in sheep's clothing and riddled with lipids!). If they would have filled a bucket for me I would have brought one. Now it's practically impossible to find one of these shops. Of course there's always Tasti-D-Lite, but the fact that they can't even call it yogurt or any kind of food product scares the bejeezus out of me. Pinkberry is also trying to bring fro-yo back and it seems to be working. I am wary.

3. Any Entenmann's reduced fat or low-fat item - Oh, Entenmann's. While I will always love you for your chocolate frosted donuts, I thought we had to go our separate ways in 1992 until you came out with a whole line of chemically altered versions of your classics. I don't know how you did it, and I don't want to, but you made a pound cake that actually tasted like pound cake and had no fat - or so we were told. I'd sit myself down and eat a whole one for lunch. Healthy! Marble loaf, raspberry danish (why was everything low-fat raspberry flavored, anyway?) it was heaven. I'm sure my inside are coated with some chemically engineered substance used to replace the fat in these delicacies.

2. Special K - When I actually needed some protein - who needs protein when you have sugar! - this cereal was the answer. Non-fat and seven grams of protein, this cereal was considered an entree in my house. Manys a dinner I'd sit down with a box of K, a gallon of skim milk and go to town. I cringe at the memory, but at least I got a lot of calcium.

1. Muffins - while I vacillated between this choice and the aforementioned Snackwells as my number one, I chose muffins because they were simply so ridiculous. Bakeries and delis all over the metropolitan area jumped on the low-fat bandwagon by churning out their own versions of muffins that met this nutritional standard. Well, at least they said so. Remember that episode of Seinfeld where they all gained weight from the "non-fat" yogurt? Well I'm sure delis everywhere were putting the same old corn muffins they'd been selling for years in the same case just adding a "NON-FAT!!" sign to them and seeing a skyrocket in sales. The fact that Seinfeld also had an episode centering around an idea for a muffin-top only bakery is reflects the ubiquity of this obsession as well.

Some places did actually make their own low-fat muffins and were honestly changing their recipes. You can tell because they tasted like shit. I would soldier on though, feeling virtuous as I ate my tasteless hunk of sweetened dough studded with dessicated cranberries or blueberries while Hubby enjoyed a Taylor ham, egg and cheese, all the while not knowing I was probably consuming twice as many calories as he was with one tenth of the enjoyment. Add the fact that said muffins, low-fat or not, were as big as my head and you can see why I was looking for elastic waist pants.

Hubby still cringes at the memory of running out for Sunday morning breakfast and my saying,"I'll just have a muffin", because then he'd have to leave with a list of the hierarchy of flavors. Banana being first, followed by corn, blah, blah, blah. He is much happier now that I can say, "Just get me one of whatever you're having."

So there it is. I am so thankful I no longer believe the hype when it comes to diets out there. Moderate portions of real food are better than mass quantities of crap any day. And while I'm not cooking with lard or doing a lot of deep frying, I am so glad things like fries are back on the menu. Because oven baked fries? A cruel, cruel joke.
Happy Friday!

*As an added bonus this Friday, please check out my all-time favorite Dunkin' Donuts commercial by clicking HERE. It makes me pee my pants every time because I think of my middle brother in-law who helped us move everything we owned, including a sleeper sofa, UP four flights of stairs.

** Just found out today is National Donut Day! Woohoooooo! Like I need an excuse to eat a donut.