Treats

The other night, it was too early to go to bed, to late to go for a ride, past the time for Internet silliness, with nothing on the radio to catch my interest, so what do I do? Get hungry??

Food seems to fill our days (and nights) and there are rows and rows of tempting treats for us to purchase for just such a moment.

Treats are what we have to reward ourselves. Just ask our pets. We enjoy sweet and salty foods and the manufactures have been more than willing to provide us with a constant variety of yummy treats.

Logically we know we should indulge in a massive amount of these and even our rational mind tells us to withstand, but we like it. Nothing is better than ice cream shared by a couple watching a monster movie late at night. 

You can’t have a sandwich without chips or fries and you can’t have chicken or fish without frying it and you can’t have a party without pizza and you can’t.. Well you see the pattern. We have all been trained. Who can watch a football game without a ton of pizza commercials? Who can think of chicken without Chicken McNuggets?

So all these temptations follow us everywhere. Restaurant menus will present appetizers of fried cheese sticks (clogging up the arties) and nachos. If that doesn’t fill you up, there are the huge slabs of meat covered in gravy sauces with sides of greasy potatoes. Just ask anyone who runs a restaurant and they will tell you the food that is thrown away are the vegetables.

From what I hear, teaching your kids how to eat involves what they will eat. Putting dark greens or berries in front of your kids makes them wonder. Do my friends eat this stuff? Am I trained to conform my palette to this kind of food? Is this food on television promoting what I should eat?

As adults we understand all the federal department that try to present information about what we should and should not eat, but this taste good. These treats reward us, just like the biscuits to our pets, even though we have not performed a trick or followed an instruction.

The best solutions I have found is do not buy the treats. Do not go down the chips aisle or the candy aisle or the pizza aisle or the pasta aisle or the… You see where I’m going. Don’t buy it and carry it home and it won’t be available when you think, “I think I want a treat.”

Create a habit and or just not buying this stuff and perhaps, just perhaps, you can break the habit. Then again, this also includes alcohol.