Fitness through Mac & Cheese??

Recently a (single male) friend of mine commented that it’s pretty easy to tell which younger women aren’t going to age well just by their food choices (edited version of his comment). The young lady had just sat down to a big bowl of Mac&Cheese.

The fact that this dish has EVER been considered “food” is a mystery to most fit people. Sure, if you’re starving to death in some war-ravaged country in Africa, Mac&Cheese is a god-send. M&C consists of an excess of simple carbs slathered with more carbs and fat, there’s not much separating M&C from a desert.

While M&C used to simply be a good way to fatten up your unaware children, this particular delicacy is now popping up in many of the best restaurants around. I guess that’s really no surprise: not only is it basically a desert masquerading as a meal that most people have fond childhood memories of, but it’s incredibly cheap to make, given that it really contains no ingredients with any nutritional value (and hence cost).

Not that I’m trying to pick on M&C alone. So many people make their meal choices without a thought to what they are really eating. I group eating choices as either having nutritional value (called food) or just calories (desert). Yes, I consider M&C desert, as are french fries, bread, any pasta, etc. There are many foods that are high in calories, but at least contain protein, healthy fats, vitamins, etc., but many more that mascaraed as food but in my view, aren’t.

Most processed foods fall into this category, and virtually ALL pre-packaged breakfast options are either straight out desserts (pop-tarts and other breakfast pastries, pancakes, french toast, most children’s breakfast cereals, etc.) or are boarderline deserts such as more health oriented breakfast cereals (which are still pretty much fortified sugar flakes). One of the most popular breakfast restaurants in my town has a line around the building almost every morning, yet serves deserts almost exclusively. Hundreds of people start their day there every day with a plate of empty calories.

Even many (supposedly) healthy snacks are really just desserts. This includes virtually all popular snack bars, and even something as seemingly benign as a fruit roll-up for your child.

The fact that my very fit friend and I would never consider ordering such a nutritional catastrophe for dinner is no surprise. Being fit is a lifestyle. Not that either of us doesn’t cheat on occasion. His weakness is fries, and mine is ice cream, but it’s a 5% thing for both of us: we eat super clean 95% of the time and acknowledge the 5% cheat as the desert it really is.

How bad to do you want that six pack?