Follow Up: Nutrition Trickery

Wow! When I quickly posted my little rant yesterday about my scuffin surprise, I had no idea what a controversy it would generate. It’s taken all day for me to get around to it, but I have lots of things to say:

For everyone asking if I heard back from Kath, I haven’t yet. If I do, I’ll let you know, but I probably won’t post her response verbatim – I’d be unhappy if someone posted one of my emails on their blog! I’ll just give you the gist, if I hear back. As far as all the Kath haters and lovers go, I’m not really either one. I like her blog enough to keep it in my reader, but I don’t feel that strongly one way or the other about her. She’s just another woman like the rest of us, trying to figure out how to stay healthy and live her best life. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we get it wrong, but I think it’s great that we can all express our opinions and learn from each other.

But the main thing I want to talk about is the intent of my post and how it came off. Jessica made a really great point when she said, “the obsession over ONE item when you are an active person isn’t healthy. One scone won’t kill you, and it won’t make you fat.” She went on to talk about how scary it was that I talked about the “detox process,” and it was then that I realized my post got it ALL wrong.

First of all – my comments about “detoxing” at lunch were meant to be tongue in cheek. Did I eat a light lunch? Yes, because I was still really full from that scone. Do I actually think I needed to “detox” from eating one pastry? Ha, absolutely not. If I “detoxed” every time I ate something that wasn’t perfect nutritionally, I’d be “detoxing” every day! I definitely shouldn’t have used that word, as I realize it has some strong connotations, particularly among those who do have eating disorders.

Second – did I eat healthy all day? Nah. I felt a thousand times better after lunch (had a bowl of soup), when my system felt a bit more balanced, and I pretty much went back to normal after that. (Including more than a few glasses of wine later that night, for which I feel no shame at all!). While I certainly indulge in my share of unhealthy food (for examples, see: the loaded nachos I scarfed down all by myself at the bar last weekend), I generally pay for it not in pounds, but in feeling out of it and gross afterward – kind of a food hangover. I won’t go all zen and Intuitive Eating and say that I feel better when I’m eating all the right foods, because I haven’t yet noticed a difference between eating totally healthy and eating just… you know… normally. But I DO notice a difference when I eat something incredibly fatty/sugary in large quantity, as happened with this silly scuffin. It makes me feel sluggish and bloated and icky – which is not a fun way to be. I completely agree that you have to listen to your body in terms of what to eat… and for what it’s worth, I should have done that yesterday and stopped when I was partway through that scuffin and already pretty satisfied. However, like many people, I have a problem stopping myself when something tastes so darn good! 🙂 Something to work on.

As far as knowing that a big scone couldn’t be healthy? Absolutely that was my fault. As far as I could tell, there weren’t any nutrition pamphlets at the bakery (though I didn’t actively look for them), nor were there caloric labels on the items like we have in NYC. I learned a few years ago that counting calories doesn’t work for me (I’m too much of a numbers girl and it makes me eat by the numbers instead of listening to my body – which may help me lose weight, but doesn’t help me feel good). Anyway – the point is well taken that it’s on me to realize that a big scone probably isn’t healthy. I intended the post to be more about how even someone who’s pretty knowledgeable about recipes and nutrition stats could misjudge the healthiness of a product. And all just because I was duped by the notorious “health halo” around Great Harvest! Gah, I’m mad at myself for that silly mistake. For what it’s worth, I had never heard of Great Harvest before Kath (there’s never been one anywhere I’ve lived/worked), so I wasn’t entirely clear that it was a franchise where the owners don’t get to make recipes for or pick any of their own products.

Anyway! Hopefully that’s all cleared up, but feel free to post any more comments. Sometimes I don’t really think about what I post before I post it, and in this case, I was focused so much on making sure I didn’t disparage Kath that I lost sight of the bigger picture – that I had gone on and on about a single pastry that was pretty minor in the scheme of things! Time to focus on more important things – like my weekend plans. New York Food & Wine Festival, here I come!