Holidays (Stuffing) and Substitutions

Yesterday I wrote about a post by WebMD describing some "frighteningly fattening foods" around the holidays, from sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and marshmallows packing 500 calories a serving, to hot toddies topped with whipped cream and eggnogs, with a cup adding some significant calories to one's daily allotment.  Mind you, when you discuss a serving, you are describing what the American Dietary Association has, in its great wisdom, chosen to measure as a serving - I don't know about you, but I have never been satisfied with a mere "serving" of anything.  To wit: a "serving" of ice cream is 1/2 cup.  Ditto for pasta - 1/2 cup.  Has anyone out there ever been happy with 1/2 cup of pasta?? or 1/2 cup of ice cream?  Gimme a break! If I'm going to enjoy either pasta or ice cream, I'm not going to be measuring it, especially not confining myself to 1/2 cup.  These are neat tricks to controlling how much we eat, but truth be told, nothing advanced thus far by the "authorities" out there has done anything but get us fatter, bigger, and sicker.

What works for me may not necessarily work for the reader.  I don't know how to have 1/2 cup of ice cream.  Therefore, I have none.  Period.  Believe me, it's no big deal.  Since I love yogurt, especially Greek yogurt, I eat that - not that it's any leaner than ice cream!

The problem with weighing and measuring is that it's contrived.  It's artificial.  It's gimmicky, and does not address hunger, nay, craving as the craving occurs, right now, urgent, insistant.  Waiting to take out the measuring cups and the digital scale is absurd.  Were it not for the craving scratching violently at your mental door, you would not be thinking of ice cream to begin with.

The same goes for the advice to fill up on raw vegetables before a holiday dinner.  My response? Yeah, right.  I'm invited to a holiday feast, with turkey or ham or rock cornish hens basted in butter, creamed squash soup with croutons, potato casserole, croissants, pies and puddings and grog, meatballs, and -- you get the idea, and I'm supposed to arrive at that dinner already stuffed and gassy from raw veggies?  Besides, I repeat, the "authorities" have tried their best to inculcate in our brains the benefits of eating raw vegetables, and the result has been a society with its nose raised in disgust at the very thought of another steamed carrot.  I agree.  Steamed or raw veggies offer nothing to satisfy a deep craving for taste, texture, aroma, satiety. 

More later ...