so… where’s the rest of my food?

I must have a little delirious when I wrote the last post because it’s really really really long. I didn’t realize I had so much to say on the topic, and actually I could probably still go about it for awhile. Oh well. Onto today’s gripe.

I’ve never really been a person who reads nutrition labels. It’s not that I don’t care about what I’m putting into my body, it’s just that growing up, I never ate a lot of things that care from packages, and so I was never really familiar with the process. I probably ate some pre-packaged food but for me, the association I have with packaged food are chips, cookies, soda and such, which were things that my mom never bought. It wasn’t until college that I really started eating things in that category. And it wasn’t until college that I met people who were so obsessed with reading labels. My sophomore year in college, I lived with girls who were overly obsessed with reading nutrition facts. I swear that the zeal that they had in reading labels went beyond the normal person’s glance at the number of calories in an ice cream bar. The most reading I did on my food items was the back of the cereal box during the few times that I did manage to eat breakfast before class. They were also obsessed with counting carbs, which I thought was a little ridiculous, since all the carbs they decided to cut out, and then some, was later consumed in alcohol that weekend.

Maybe it was because of their influence, but I’ve been paying a little more attention to the nutrition labels. I always knew that the serving sizes on the labels were sometimes a little ridiculous. But while making lunch a few days ago, I was really hit with this fact. I know that this country has gone on a real kind of health craze. The focus on the fact that Americans are overweight and such has pushed ideas about ideas about diets (cough, cough ATKINS cough cough) and exercise to the forefront. And with that portion control and moderation have become key. I feel like I understand the need for portion control. I have fallen victim to eating half a tub of ice cream in one sitting without thinking about it, and recently with Girl Scout cookie season, it was pretty bad too. But reading the serving size on basic things like bread and eggs, I was pretty surprised and a little confused.

Honestly? 1 Slice of bread is the serving size? So much for a sandwich huh? It’s like my attempt to be healthy by having a turkey sandwich instead of a burger has become a little less healthy. The turkey sandwich is healthier than the burger but it’s like they’re telling me I’ve already had too many carbs during this meal. And don’t even really know how that works with the new food pyramid that doesn’t really relate to serving sizes anymore. Before it was about 10 servings of grains, breads, and carbs a day, but now they talk about them in ounces. I think it’s roughly around 7 ounces of grains for a 2200 calorie diet. I really don’t know how to figure that out. So much thinking.

Here’s another one:

Really? One egg? When people eat eggs for breakfast, don’t they normally eat two? And you can’t really make an omelette with just one egg. The only time I have just one egg is with ramen. Even recently with fried rice and kimchi fried rice I have two eggs. Or in cobb salad, I’ll have one egg. But in everything else, doesn’t one egg just seem a little bit lacking? I tend to think of eggs in pairs. But anyways, onto the most ridiculous and the one that prompted me to write this really long post:

Honestly, who eats just half a package of ramen? It does ultimately point to the extreme unhealthiness of ramen, but really? Half a package of ramen? I understand that portion control is important, but don’t think that eating 2 servings of ramen with more than one egg on top will kill me. But then again, I did feel extremely sick after eating only ramen for almost a month because I was broke. I guess what I’m trying to say is that knowing what you are putting into your body is important, but that people shouldn’t get side-tracked with labels. We probably shouldn’t be eating so much food that requires such intense label reading anyways, aka ramen. But if I have to read labels, probably only eating 15 Wheat-Thins is a good thing, but I’m not gonna stress if I ate 30. But maybe I just want to have my ramen and eat it too.

P.S. Ramen tastes better if you rinse the noodles and then make the soup separately before adding the noodles again. The soup doesn’t get all starchy and thick. That way you can eat twice as much ramen before you feel like throwing up… 😉