I’ve vowed before to give up fake food. It was one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2007, in fact.
But I fell off the wagon pretty quick. I did manage to give up the fakest of fake foods, my beloved Nutritious Creations chocolate-chip cookies.
Nevertheless, I was still eating tons of “food” that came in crinkly packages from corner delis. One-serving packages of Apple Jacks or Sugar Pops, Snackwell’s cookies, Nutrigrain bars…I didn’t kid myself that this “food” was healthy, but I ate a lot of it.
Somehow, reading Gary Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories a few weeks ago finally convinced me to stop, cold turkey. And I haven’t had fake food in three weeks.
I know myself well enough to know that I had to give up all fake food, cold turkey. I’m in the same camp as Samuel Johnson, who remarked, “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.”
Now, to be honest, I don’t consider diet soda a “fake food.” And I still eat Tasti-D-Lite, the yummy frozen “yoghurt” treat. And I use tons of artificial sweetener. I still eat candy and other sweets. But no more crinkly packages.
I haven’t noticed any change in my body. I haven’t lost weight, I don’t have more energy, I’m not any more or less hungry.
But I feel much HAPPIER. I hadn’t realized that I got a prick of conscience every time I bought those items that I knew had no nutritional value and that I was substituting for healthy food. Or when I read an article about the importance of eating right. Or when I reflected on what I’d eaten in a particular day.
The First Splendid Truth holds that to think about happiness, we must think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
My bad eating habits were giving me a lot of “feeling bad.” Now those bad feelings have been removed. Such a relief.
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One subject that fascinates me is the presentation of information. The way that you shape and display information makes a huge difference to the way it is received. So a place I like to visit is Presentation Zen. I’m slowly working my way through the recommended reading list, as well.
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