ho is buying all that white bread down at the grocery store? Everybody I Wknow is using multi-grain or whole wheat, and yet the shelves are overflowing with Wonder Bread.Walk through your local supermarket and look at all the questionable foods. They are not just there for decoration; somebody is buying Ho Hos and Yoo Hoo, week after week.
I don’t see the shelves of candy getting any smaller, either. We used to think candy was an excellent source of quick energy, going so far as to include chocolate bars in military survival gear. Now we know that candy is evil, right up there with cigarettes, soda and sometimes, coffee.
Years ago Wonder Bread was the apex of the food triangle. After all, didn’t it build strong bodies eight ways? They even managed to eliminate the holes in the slices by a "scientific" process known as "doughmogenized." Advertising is especially noted for its wordsmiths.
I have to admit that I buy an occasional candy bar and last year I rebelled against grain bread. Tomato sandwiches and PBJs, in my opinion, require white bread in the same way that a painting requires a white canvass. All those little seeds and nuts confuse the palate.
Thankfully, the jury is still out on pizza. The main issue here has more to do with the ability of the digestive system to cope with the acidic nature of the food. I used to hear that pizza was a well-balanced food item until the whole cholesterol thing brought out questions about all cheese-related foods. Imagine! Cheese under attack! This was always a "wholesome" food.
Think bread and cheese, crackers and cheese, grilled cheese, cheese nachos, Easy Cheese (cheese in a pressurized can) and what about all those great recipes with that miracle of modern manufacturing, Cheez Whiz? Doesn’t criticism of American Cheese smack of sedition? Thanks to the doom and gloom crowd I can feel my arteries constricting with every cheezy bite.
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I guess the most sensible approach is to maintain a balance. Now clearly, healthy food is denser so it follows that you can and should have about twice as much of the other stuff in order to maintain this balance. I figure about two doughnuts equals one slice of wheat bread. There is no definitive way of measuring this, so you just have to eyeball it. Try squinting a bit with the eye that’s on the healthy stuff.
I recently found the perfect snack food, whole-grain Cheez-Its. A self-contained, balanced snack that is only lacking one minor detail to complete itself. Now where did I put my can of Easy Cheese? It kills that whole-grain taste.
Bill Abrams resides (and satisfies his gourmet palate) in Pine Plains.
