My Beef With Diet Foods

It should come as no surprise that many Americans are obsessed with losing weight. We're constantly bombarded  with endless advertisements promoting diet foods. And it seems that there's a low-calorie, low-fat alternative to almost every type food. It's about time that this nonsense ends........

I'm tired of hearing about how great tasting low-calorie foods can be. You know as well as I do, that diet foods generally have about as much flavor as a cardboard box. To make them even somewhat palatable, you have to dump a half pound of salt on them.

Tina is always trying to prepare some kind of new "healthy" meal. Every now and then, she'll try to pull the old bait and switch trick and serve me a turkey burger. When the jig is finally up, she'll try to convince me that there isn't much difference between a turkey burger and a traditional cheeseburger. Are you kidding me?? An Angus cheeseburger is delectable, satisfying staple of Americana while a turkey burger is a sacrilegious waste of bird flesh. Big difference!

Other times, she'll serve up something called cous-cous. First off, the name itself sounds downright silly. This tasteless concoction is like bland, light rice. If you injected rice with helium, you would have something similar to cous-cous. You could probably eat a 50-gallon drum of this stuff and still be hungry.

Several years ago, a co-worker told me that he had recently lost some weight by going on something called the Atkins Diet. He told me that his new diet consisted of mostly steak, burgers (sans the roll), fried chicken  and bacon. Yes, bacon! It was like an angel appeared before me. I immediately wanted to join the Atkins team.

So, I head off to the store to buy some "diet food". When I get home, Tina looks in the bag and asks why I bought ten pounds of bacon. I tell her that I'm going on a diet. She tells me that I'm an idiot and then asks me to please increase my life insurance policy. I can't win!

The low carb craze from a few years ago also gave a boost to light beer sales. A light beer, although pretty much tasteless, only has a few carbs. I always get a kick out of the light beer advertisements. They all claim to taste great. As a bit of a beer connoisseur, I can tell you first hand that all light beers suck. Yes, I drink them occasionally, but there's not a light beer out there that can hold a candle to a good ol' Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

Along the same lines, Americans consume massive amounts of diet soda every year. I'll admit, they're not quite as tasteless as "diet beer". But just to be safe, I like to add a heaping dose of Captain Morgan to my Diet Coke. It enhances the flavor and, at the same time, makes me forget that I'm actually consuming a "diet drink".

On another note, I was shopping at a local wholesale club a while back. On the way out, I grabbed what I thought was a hot dog. Upon further review, it turned out that I had actually bought a fat-free hot dog. I knew that there was no way this was going to be good. So, I reluctantly took a bite. It tasted like compressed sawdust! Fighting the urge to toss it in the trashcan, I loaded it up with a mega-dose of mustard and somehow finished it off. That would be my first and last fat-free frank.

I might not live as long as someone who lives off of broiled fish and green tea, but that's ok. As long as my heart continues to pump blood through my arteries, I plan to eat real foods with real flavor. I think there's a filet mignon and a good draft beer waiting for me somewhere tonight.......

KW