So in my travels yesterday I ran across this recipe for potato salad with chili-cumin vinaigrette, which looks exceedingly awesome. The ingredients are potatoes, onions, peppers, fresh and dried herbs and spices, vinegar, 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1/2 tsp. of sugar. Hey, I can handle that!
And in addition to vouching for the salad’s tastiness, the author points out this benefit:
[S]ince it’s mayo-less and uses olive oil as the base, this is very low in calories and fat, which makes it almost guilt-free.
Emphasis mine.
Setting aside the placement of food into “guilt-inducing” and “guilt-free” categories for a moment (even though it’s kind of the whole point)… “ALMOST?” 1/4 cup of olive oil (“good” fat, as the author remembered to mention in comments) and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar over 5 cups of potatoes and chopped veggies amounts to almost guilt-free?
What the fuck is actually guilt-free, then? Are water and air okay? Or will I never be good enough until I transcend my body entirely?
I don’t mean to pick on the recipe’s author, who is probably perfectly lovely, and who furthermore has invented a potato salad I can’t wait to try. I mean to pick on a culture in which that kind of statement is so commonplace, it hardly even registers anymore. “Very low in calories and fat” = “almost guilt-free.” Jesus.
In the past week, off the top of my head, I’ve also seen the following things:
- Chili’s “Guiltless Grill” menu. Stuff that’s lower in fat and calories, so you don’t have to hate yourself! And it’s alliterative! HA! Isn’t that cute?
- Grocery store (Wild Oats) shelves full of a zillion different kinds of yogurt, with only one full-fat version that I could find. I’ve noticed this at regular old grocery stores, too, and it’s a big deal for me, because when I decided to banish dieting from my life, one of my first symbolic acts was to swear off low-fat yogurt. I love yogurt, and since I don’t particularly like straight milk, the yogurt I put on my Colon Blow in the morning is one of my main sources of calcium, not to mention one of my favorite things. (Okay, my bones are probably doing fine with all the cheese I eat, but shhhhh. Not the point.) Furthermore, low-fat yogurt is usually loaded with sugar to make it, you know, taste like something, and what that makes it taste like, in my opinion, is very sweet ass. So I wanted no more of that — which was fine for a while, but now it’s getting almost impossible to find full-fat, full-guilt yogurt. The good news is, I found this stuff, which is superyum and has no added sugar (so wait, do I get to feel unguilty about that part?), since fat actually does taste like something. The bad news is, if I didn’t like it, I’d be up shit creek. Because real yogurt is not, apparently, marketable in this day and age. Too much guilt and all.
- A brownie bar I impulse bought at Wild Oats, brand name “Vegan Indulgence.” I bought it because it looked good, and I was hungry. Unfortunately, I chucked it after a few bites, because all I could think was, “Damn, you know what this could really use? Some eggs and butter.”* Once again, sugar had to stand in for the usual guilt-inducing ingredients (which, in this case, at least have a legitimate moral argument against them), and that just doesn’t do it for me. But still, that — and the fact that it’s a baked good at all — qualifies it as an “Indulgence.” I hate to sound like a grumpy old coot, but man, in my day, when we moralized about food, at least we didn’t call anything an indulgence unless it was actually fucking good.
- An entire brand of cookies called Nana’s NO’s, which would irritate me because of the superfluous apostrophe anyway, but makes it that much worse by being marketed entirely on what’s not in the cookies. I mean, on the one hand, it’s effective: I’ve been looking to eat more gluten-free shit, for reasons you really don’t want to know about, and the big international NO symbol on the packages definitely caught my eye. (Naturally, they only had one kind of gluten-free cookie, which interested me not at all.) But the concept just depresses me. If I had any culinary or business skills, I would totally start a company called Auntie Kate’s YESes. And we’d just sell big tubs of frosting with instructions for sticking your face in them.
- A Google search on “guilt-free food” (with quotes) that returns 678 hits. No quotes returns about 435,000.
For fuck’s sake, WE NEED FAT AND SUGAR IN OUR DIETS. THAT’S WHY THEY TASTE GOOD. No, we don’t need them in cupcake form, or whatever other “indulgence” floats your guilty, guilty boat, but we actually cannot live without them. And you know what would be a great, healthy way to get a dose of necessary fat and sugar, for instance? Potato salad made with olive oil.
But even that is not quite guilt-free. Because there’s still food in it.
This shit has got to stop. ‘Cause, for starters, you know who needs fat and sugar even more than I do? The Children. For once, yeah, I’ll actually think of them. They need proportionately more “bad” food than adults to, um, what do you call it? Oh, right, GROW. But the more we conflate “healthy” and “not shameful” with “low-fat and low-cal,” while simultaneously putting pressure on parents (by which I mean, of course, mothers) to make sure their children never experience anything pleasurable arguably unhealthy, the more you can bet we’re going to see a bunch of fucking malnourished kids. Not to mention kids who learn to eat compulsively in secret, because their parents and doctors are withholding everything that tastes good.
I think we’re clear on the fact that I’m no fan of low-fat, low-cal diets for anyone — I’m a fan of eating a wide variety of foods in portions that satisfy you without making you uncomfortably full, period. But for children — and, I might add, seniors — eating only “guilt-free” food amounts to not getting the nutrition you need. Categorizing even olive oil and boiled potatoes, not to mention pure fruit juice (oh, the calories!) and fresh fruit (the carbs!) and whole milk and cheese and peanut butter and avocados (the fat!) as “guilt-inducing” is just beyond the fucking pale.
In fact, I’d call it shameful.
*Please note that I am not at all opposed to vegan treats in general, and I highly recommend the chocolate chip cookie recipe here.
Consumption of any kind is so conflicting. Look at Us Weekly and you’ll see skinny celebrities with $1,000 handbags (that were given to them as gifts so that people like you & me could lust after those handbags).
The message? It’s okay to consume/what we tell you to consume/but you have to feel guilty about it/because shame is a great motivator for temporary change/and nothing fulfills the desire for temporary change more than consumption.
Yeah, CG, a lot of people have put forth the theory that fatphobia is really an expression of our cultural anxiety about overconsumption. I can drive two blocks in my Hummer and pull my full wallet out of my designer handbag and spend $200 getting my hair done and buy a $700 baby stroller and a $2,000 chair on one of my 10 credit cards, but goddammit, I DON’T EAT TOO MUCH!
Kate, you are officially proclaimed my Hero Of The Day. I should make a graphic for that.
“And we’d just sell big tubs of frosting with instructions for sticking your face in them.”
(Apparently WP doesn’t like the little ascii arrow i tried to do, so my post got all cut off. Eek! Here’s what it was supposed to be.)
Kate, you are officially proclaimed my Hero Of The Day. I should make a graphic for that.
“And we’d just sell big tubs of frosting with instructions for sticking your face in them.” … my co-workers now think i am insane. Or a hyena, from all the cackling. Either way, i am amused, and glad i was not drinking anything at the time.
It’s amazing how long it’s taken humanity to realize that all of these natural foods we’ve been eating millenia before recorded time… they’re all BAD for us. How, as a species, have we survived without our guilt-free cheesy vegan poofs?
It’s just ridiculous.
I love your posts, and i’m in particular agreement with this one, because I too love yogurt and i will not compromise for the “fat/guilt free” versions. They’re full of chemicals and lack all of the good stuff that makes yogurt, well, yogurt. I’m currently having a love affair with the FULL FAT Greek Fage yogurt. It’s amazing… i encourage you to try it if you haven’t already done so.
But back to the point, it’s ironic how something that the food industry has tried to make healthier for us, like frosting, is actually a hell of a lot worse than the real thing (not to mention far less satisfying). True frosting is of course butter, sugar, and a bit of milk, whipped. Thank god Duncan Hines intervened and added partially hydrogenated oils to help alleviate some of the FAT (gasp!) that the dreaded culprit ‘butter’ would otherwise add.
And I furthermore love your comment about the hummer… so true. I personally make a point to give all hummer drivers the one finger salute when they drive by. FU H2.
I don’t like yogurt unless it’s sweet, which is probably why I don’t buy it. But, how incredibly silly is it to tell us not to drink (or give our children to drink) fruit juice! OMG, the horrors that they should get simple sugars in the form of actual fruit.
I think that what you might be running into in that recipe as the guilt laden food is potatoes. It’s amazing to me that potatoes have become so maligned.
Oh, I know. CAAAAAARBS!!!!! TAKE COVER!
(Also, the potatoes were really what I was talking about when I said this recipe delivers sugar — not the half teaspoon of actual sugar.)
This is an EXCELLENT rant and made me laugh and think in equal measure. Thanks!
Lindsay, you are spot on! Kate, I almost peed myself with the frosting and instructions comment.
Does anyone remember the comic strip Bloom County? I loved it for political commentary and just plain old being a fun read. Brethed did a segment on what you can and cannot do based on what society tells you is good and bad. He took it to extremes by having the boarding house becoming vegan, than not wearing anything ‘animal’ or harmful, then had them hanging from a tree so they wouldn’t step on anything alive and kill it, then wearing a surgical mask so they wouldn’t breath a bacteria or virus that would die once it got inside of them (due to our immune system fighting it off), etc. This post made me think of that because it feels like this is what happens in the world today. We start of with a really good idea which people tailor to themselves in their own way – then we take it to the friggin EXTREME by saying everybody has to do something ‘this way’ otherwise they are wrong/bad/shameful/guiltridden/etc. so nobody enjoys it anymore and its lost its true meaning that was established in the beginning. I hate that about society. Umm, thanks for letting me rant a little.
Whole Foods carries Brown Cow yogurt–a very nice cream on top yogurt.
Thanks for posting that. I don’t eat low-fat food on principle–if they have to advertise it as low fat, I assume it doesn’t taste like much.
About the yogurt: I’m a Canadian who has been living in Turkey for about five years. It’s still completely normal to only have access to the 100% natural, full fat yogurt here. You can buy tubs in size medium, big, large, huge, and industrial family barrel. They even have one kind that I love called ‘kaymakli’, which has an extra layer of cream yogurt on the surface of the full-fat yogurt.
Those little tubs of sugared fat-free yogurt-like-product are only available in fairly affluent neighbourhoods, in big supermarkets. The affluent women who can buy these little fat free tubs are also the ones who, in the past 5 years, have begun a very sudden and herd-like descent into eating disorders and scary anorexia symptoms. I was a university lecturer here at a private college and at least half of my female students had an eating disorder. These are kids whose parents can afford $15,000/year tuition. This is not the norm in this country.
Since I’ve been here, however, I’ve lost weight and lost the insane food cravings I had back in North America. I eat full fat everything here. Butter, cheese, meat, yogurt. But…the portions are small and everything comes with a ton of veggies and a ton of olive oil. It’s great. All those fast food, frozen food, ready food, packaged food things just aren’t easily available or easily affordable. I find myself feeling horrified by the manufactured, altered, scary stuff that passes as ‘treats’ or god forbid ‘indulgences’ in North America when I read the magazines my family sends me.
Can I recommend maybe finding a Turkish or Greek grocer in order to find the yogurt you crave?
PS Long story short, I love this site. I’m compulsively addicted to it. Thank you.
I’ve noticed it too; the yogurts. The really really yummy organic lines are starting to be featured in regular (as opposed to Whole Foods or the like) stores, but not the really really yummy variety! I have to go to Whole Foods to find the cream on top.
And try this one… as I started switching to more organic foods, I had a hard time finding organic half and half in the regular markets… again, only at Whole Foods, which had the expanded lines. I finally figured out that to so many consumers, Organic equals Healthy, and so it couldn’t possibly equal Half and Half! Because why would someone eating healthily put something as inherently unhealthy as FAT in their coffee? (Keeping in mind that coffee is so healthy for us!)
I will say that this has already changed in the last six months, but the half and half was definitely the last of the organics to arrive.
“But, how incredibly silly is it to tell us not to drink (or give our children to drink) fruit juice! OMG, the horrors that they should get simple sugars in the form of actual fruit.”
Don’t get me started on how many damn coupons for fruit juice that WIC gives out– or for eggs. Then the government turns around and points the finger at poor moms trying to do the best by the kids BY FEEDING THEM at any means possible- and tells them to lay off the juice for sugars and eggs for cholesterol.
Woohoo! Bring me one of those vat o’ frosting!
This is a great rant, Kate. I enjoyed it thoroughly, given that I have been hating the self-flagellating lexicon of diet food marketers for about ever. “Indulgence” always means a stingy dole that is the culinary equivalent of methadone. I’ve always found it interesting too how green became the color of fat-free processed food packaging. If I remember correctly, green is on the opposite side of the color wheel from red, which studies have found is the most appetizing color (which is why fast food chains use it so much). So there’s self-denial even in the packaging. Bleah.
Also, weighing in on the good yogurt dearth (oh my god…I so want to go to Turkey now), have you tried Nancy’s?
http://www.nancysyogurt.com/nancys_products/honey_yogurt.php
I live in Oregon, which is the health food capitol of the world, so I don’t know how available it is elsewhere, but the full-fat honey yogurt is flat out amazing. Their kefir is also a yummy treat, and they make the only cottage cheese that I actually look forward to eating.
I want to scream when I hear women talking about how “good” they’ve been that day because they haven’t eaten anything “guilt-inducing.” Great post, Kate.
OMFG, do not get me started on the impossibility of finding full-fat yogurt!
My kids, for reasons unknown to me and my hubby, have decided to be vegetarian for the foreseeable future. We eat meat, we offer them meat, they look at us like we’re offering them feces. Whaddaya gonna do? I don’t think there’s anything especially important about eating meat, it’s just what I’m used to and dammit, it tastes good to me. Really though, I generally don’t mind my kids not eating meat.
But it means that getting them sufficient protein and fat is not as easy as it would be if they would just eat meat like we do. Ever since they were old enough to eat it, yogurt has been a favorite for them, but trying to find full-fat yogurt is a raging pain in the ass. Finding it with, y’know, fruit flavors in it? An even ragier pain in the ass.
Anyway, we’ve managed all right. I have to agree with previous commenters – Fage Greek yogurt is fantastic. I adore it, though it’s a little beyond our budget for everyday consumption. Also we’ve become big fans of Kefir – there’s a great producer out of Chicago, I believe, so right in your area, who makes some lovely stuff. Tastes great, tons of protein, though I think it’s generally low-fat as opposed to full-fat.
Honestly, I don’t mind the lower-fat versions, so long as nobody tries to fob that fat-free aspartame-laden crap off on me as “yogurt.” blegh!!!
When I studied abroad in Austria, the only yogurt available in the local grocery store was full-fat. And oooohhhh was it good. I can no longer eat what passes for yogurt in chain supermarkets. Funny how a so heavily promoted “health food” is pumped full of high fructose corn syrup and tastes strange. Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing.
And not only do we need fat in our diets, without a sufficient amount, people get depressed:
http://health.yahoo.com/topic/depression/prevention/article/pt/Psychology_Today_articles_pto-20030429-000002
This is so annoying! There’s an ad campaign on TV here at the moment for Special K bars, all about how it’s ok to “remember you” and eat this disgustingly sweet cereal bar because it’s “93% fat-free”. Some pizza place was advertising that you could get brownies and dipping sauce delivered with your pizza, of course advertised as a “wicked, sinful indulgence…tempt yourself” and showing a female hand with a shitty black nail polish job dipping brownies in sauce. Then there’s the ad for cream cheee that features ANGELS (skinny women in pyjamas with wings) eating it because it’s a “good” food that has 60% less fat than butter and you can therefore slathe on three times as much, and, says one angel to another as she plucks a feather from the other’s wing, it will keep you “light as a feather”. *gag* I don’t want to be light as a feather and be blown away in a light breeze!
This is why I adore Nigella Lawson. She’s not moaning when she eats the delicious dessert she just made because it’s going to go straight to her hips, but because it’s a gorgeous thing capable of producing mouth orgasms. She and the Two Fat Ladies are probably the only women TV chefs I’ve seen that take a genuine delight in cooking and eating. (I love that one of the Fat Ladies did everything you’re not supposed to – smoking, drinking, eating plenty of foods full of saturated fat and sugar, rather light on the exercise, lots of late night socialising – and still lived to be nearly 80.)
The only plain yoghurt I can eat is full-fat Mediterranean style. The rest just taste weird. So do all artificially low-fat foods, come to think of it. And I refuse to sell myself short on taste. If someone is so worried about their fat consumption, why not just have half a serving instead of punishing yourself by eating the awful low-fat version? Oh wait.
God, yes! I was reading The Gospel of Food yesterday and he talks about this very issue, how we’re striving to take out of food all the very nutrients nature has so kindly placed in them for us. His rhapsodic description of full-fat yogurt sent me straight to the grocery store where I had the same experience as everyong–scanning the shelves endlessly before finding that one, lone, dusty brand of full-fat yogurt banished to a lower shelf.
But, hell, I can find 96 different fat-free, chemically-enhanced taste sensations in handy-dandy 100 calorie packs.
Why can’t food just be food?
It’s a good thing Nancy’s yogurt exists-it’s the only “real” yogurt I’ve found that’s affordable.
You can even get kids to eat the plain stuff by throwing in a little bit of jam (less sugar, more flavor).
I will cop to drinking skim milk, but I don’t understand why yogurt is lowfat. Have you ever tried to see how much yogurt you can eat in one sitting?
I don’t recommend it.
I’m just laughing about the “Colon Blow” reference.
If your store carries FAGE Greek yogurt, there’s a full fat version. The bonus is that Greek yogurt is so thick you could use it to patch holes in your walls.
I try really super extra hard not to put food into “good” and “bad” categories but it’s so EVERYWHERE that I can’t help it sometimes. I realized this when I said to a male friend “Gosh I’ve eaten so much gross food lately” and he said “IT’S JUST FOOD!!!” He has this completely neutral view of food – like, broccoli is food and so is pizza and neither is good or bad, they’re just food.
My mom used to try and keep me away from junk food growing up (no Koolaid or donuts in the house) and I still ended up fat so GO FIGURE.
I do so love how you post every day. You’re so regular, must be your diet.
Aaanyway, I really enjoyed this post. When I was pregnant I was looking for full fat products because I was advised to eat them and then I realised – they’re almost impossible to find. I completely agree with you and everyone here that proper yoghurt is sooooo much nicer than fat-free crap.
I like elasticwaist’s comment too. Agree, agree.
Great original post, and even better followup, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. I totally feel your pain, as I was just complaining to the b/f a couple days ago about the terrible lack of choices when it came to non-lite yogurt. I wasn’t even looking at fat content specifically, just for something w/o artificial sweetener(s), which he doesn’t like. (I only get cravings for yogurt about once a decade, so I’m not going to eat any of it, as the rest of the time, it’s yucky to me. Kind of like Taco Bell, only that’s an annual craving thing.) We bemoaned the fact that yogurt has gone from being a normal people food to a yuppie-chicks-on-a-diet food. Freaked me out to see that there were shelves and shelves of “lite” varieties, in every flavor imaginable (and several I hadn’t imagined) but when it came to normal, it was basically just plain or vanilla. Didn’t occur to me to try the organic store, but there’s all of a single organic supermarket in the whole metro Birmingham (AL, not UK) area, and it just opened in February. We actually found what he wanted at pretty much the exact opposite end of the spectrum, namely Costco’s store brand. Big container of a dozen units in assorted flavors w/o artificial sweetener (and just “reduced fat” instead of “fat free”) and each unit has twice as much as the Yoplaits. So, you not only feel more satisfied because it has actual nutrients and stuff in it, but also because it’s a proper size portion. Four ounces of a semi-liquid is NOT a meal, or even really a decent snack. He was moaning in pleasure that it was just like the yogurt we could get when we were kids.
I’m generally of the opinion that if you’re eating “junk food,” (not talking about yogurt, which I consider a “health food”, I guess because everything yummy is replaced with yogurt in Health Food Stores, like carob replaces chocolate) you should just enjoy it the way it is, and not pretend that it’s health food by getting fat-free, artificially sweetened versions, which never satisfy the craving, anyway, for the reasons that you mentioned. If you want it, enjoy it, and really, if you try to substitute around your craving, you end up eating 3 times as much as you would have if you’d just eaten what you wanted in the first place, often after giving in and eating the craved food at the end, which is better because why? Dark chocolate has taken a prominent place in our snack cabinet, since it seriously satisfies ALL cravings really quickly. Mmmmm.
Now, I’m not opposed to artificial sweeteners in general, I really can’t tell the difference, and sometimes it’s even better (like, Diet Dr. Pepper vs. regular Dr. Pepper). Same with “reduced fat,” in some cases, I really, truly prefer it, esp. with dairy products, where the full fat is often just distractingly greasy. Reduced fat Cheez-Its come to mind as a specific example, but most cheeses and cheese products are similar. Milk, too, I prefer skim because it tastes “colder” to me – I realize that makes no sense on its face, “tastes cold? Esp. when it’s actually the exact same temperature?” – but I guess that’s because the fat leaves a smooth mouth feel that I interpret as a warm feeling. Which isn’t what I’m wanting when I’m craving milk.
As far as frosting now being made with partially hydrogenated oils and other artificial ingredients, I always thought that that had nothing to do with fear of dietary fat and sugar, as anyone who reads labels knows it has just as much, so much as cheapness of ingredients and shelf stability and all those other concerns. I try to only eat real butter, as it tastes sooooo much better than margarine, which has the exact same amount of fat (like, 100%), but making frosting by hand is a bit of a pain, and you can stick the leftovers of the store stuff in the fridge or freezer indefinitely, so we usually go w/that, instead of bothering making it.
But seriously, why eat a brownie if it doesn’t even taste good?
Lots to respond to here, but for now, I’ll just say:
A) Thanks to everybody for the comments and compliments! and
B) I can’t believe there are SO MANY people who have noticed the low-fat yogurt thing and are pissed off about it! I totally thought that was just my dumb little pet peeve (even if it illustrated a larger point).
Just goes to show, once again, how much the availabilty of products determines what people will buy, rather than the other way around. I mean, obviously, people must not have bought as much full-fat yogurt, or it wouldn’t be going the way of the dodo — but if there are this many actively seeking it out among the readers of my little blog, you’d think stores could afford to cough up more than one option, wouldn’t you?
Completely agree. At least we can still get full-fat yoghurt in Oz. I used to justify it to myself by saying I only bought the full-fat stuff because my toddler is too young to be eating reduced fat foods, but now I just buy it because reduced fat yoghurt is revolting.
And I refuse to sell myself short on taste. If someone is so worried about their fat consumption, why not just have half a serving instead of punishing yourself by eating the awful low-fat version? Oh wait.
YAY! I thought I was the only one who thought of that. :D
Stonyfield Farms organic whole-milk/full-fat yogurt for me, but they only have four flavors. Luckily they’re good.
If I’m avoiding anything, it’s artificial “foods” pumped up with chemicals and fillers. If I want apple, I’m going to eat an apple, not “apple-flavored all-natural food product”. If the labeling has to identify it as food — what, to persuade me? — I’m not interested. Actual food, plskthx.
You know, I hadn’t ever noticed that most yogurt was low-fat, but that could be why I can’t stand the stuff anymore. I never was a huge fan, but I do remember that when I was a kid I could eat it. Now? Gods. I tried, because my doctor wanted me to have more calcium and vitamins, but it tasted like….well, it made me want to throw up. Maybe I’ll see if I can find some real fat. Maybe that’ll taste right.
I hate, hate, HATE low/no fat foods. Because they taste awful. All the sugar and chemicals they put in to replace the fat just makes me…gah. Right now, I have some Strawberry Cheesecake frozen yogurt that I wanted to try. It’s no fat, but the brand is generally good, so I thought…what the hell? Well, it tastes like someone dumped a vat of artificial sweetener in it and I’ve wasted money on something I’m just gonna throw out. I remember being able to go to Dairy Queen and get tubs of frozen vanilla yogurt topped with fresh strawberry slices. Oh, gods. If I could get that now….
I want food that tastes good, period. Yes, I generally avoid that slice of chocolate cake that’s 800 calories. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to avoid all chocolate cake. (Or the really, really good, really, really fat one all the time, either.) Bodies need fat. How hard is that to understand?
I’m so glad I found your blog!
The disconnect between “healthy” food and truly healthy food bugs the shit out of me. Anytime you strip a naturally fatty food of its fat, you’re stripping vitamins and minerals with it, rendering it not-healthy and not-tasty.
And I second (or third, fourth?) the Annie’s Honey Yogurt. I used to eat it with honey and walnuts, and oh-my-stars-and-garters was it good.
I actually prefer the kind that’s plain – yogurt is really easy to flavor by adding stuff like jam. You can make a great lemon yogurt with sugar or honey and lemon juice.
To the person who thinks frosting is hard to make, it is really easy to whip up a simple frosting. I make myself a one or two serving of frosting a couple of times a week. Just melt a little butter and add cream or milk and powdered sugar until it’s the consistency you want. You can put in some cocoa powder or vanilla or even a grated chocolate bar for extra goodness. I make it in a tea cup in the microwave.
I wish I still had the article but while doing a report for a class I came across a news article online talking about a health movement going through schools trying to reduce childhood obesity.
Their solution was to remove all products from vending machines that had more than x-amount of calories. What products fell under that label? 100% fruit juice. What would they replace those 100% fruit juices with?
Sports drinks and flavored waters filled with splenda or aspartame. Brilliant!