Baked apples are one of my daughter's favorites. I make a batch about twice per month for her to have with her bacon in the morning before school, or along with some salami and cheese for an after school snack. We adhere to a no/low sugar diet and have done so since the day we adopted our daughter at 8 months old.
Knowing what I know, I have to tell you that I am always perplexed by the concept of giving sugar to kids (or yourself for that matter) as some sort of reward. I don't judge people for it, I am merely confused by it. Sugar, after all is the largest contributor to chronic disease and obesity yet we've somehow turned the narrative into something along the lines of "loving our kids is giving them foods that will eventually riddle them with disease." Quite fascinating if you really stop and break it down.
Anyway, this past weekend we made a trip over to a new cookie place in town. A friend of mine is the creator of the brand and it is the fastest growing retail cookie company in the nation right now. They recently opened a location in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho where I live so I figured we 'd give it a try and see what all the fuss is about. From a creative entrepreneurial side, I look at things like branding, packaging and the overall emotional response elicited from the experience. My daughter was more focused on what these remarkable looking cookies were going to taste like.
We picked up 3 cookies in the gorgeous box, felt a slight elation about the feel and look of our new goodies and drove straight home to take a sample slice of each flavor.
The verdict....delicious!!!
Beyond the taste, we each had some unique noticings as well. My husband @Fatzrat pointed out the fine layer of grease left behind on his fingers. I recognized the unfamiliar feeling of my body temperature increasing as my insulin levels started to spike. Scarlett's take away didn't hit her until a bit later when she was burping up a strange acid which caused her to jump up from the table, believing she had just vomited a bit in her mouth 🤭
Out of curiosity, I went to the website just to take a peek at the nutritional facts. Now, I knew full well the ingredient list would look more like a kitchen solvent than a food label but I was curious as to the calories, along with the fat and sugar content. Here is what I found:
Calories = 460
Fat = 45 grams
Sugar = 28 grams
Yikes! But wait, it gets better.
Servings per cookie = 2
So take the numbers I listed above and double them if you eat the entire cookie, which is only about 3" in diameter. 920 calories, 90 grams of fat and 56 grams of sugar.
There is a clear reason this company is the fastest growing new retail cookie company in the U.S. and there is an equally clear reason why 72% of men and 67% of women in this country are overweight or obese. There is a reason 13.9 million children are obese.
There is a reason 13.9% of 2- to 5-year-olds, 18.4% 6- to 11-year-olds, and 20.6% 12- to 19-year-olds are obese.
Let's get back to my baked apples, shall we? There is a total of 6 ingredients in this recipe and a total of 128 grams of sugar in the entire 13x9 inch pan. I use coconut sugar instead of refined sugar because it yields a beautiful, caramelized color and taste and it isn't "bleached" using sulphur dioxide, phosphoric acid, calcium hydroxide, and activated carbon like refined sugar.
Now, no sugar is certainly better than coconut sugar but we don't live in an elitist bubble and we aren't on a mission to make our daughter a compulsive food freak;) We are simply being honest and aware about the way in which we use food to "love" her.
As Scarlett sat down this morning, to her plate of bacon and a serving of baked apples containing 15 grams of sugar, 4 grams of fat and a total of 109 calories, she thanked me. Her exact words were something like "thank you so much mom! These are amazing and they didn't make me puke a little bit into my own mouth."
My response was I am aiming beyond not making her puke. I'm also shooting for things like not giving her a chronic disease, not causing her to have insulin resistance, chronic inflammation, allergies, arthritis, life long weight issues and early death.
Be careful how you are "loving" your kids and yourself.
Your happiness is not a gift given to you by others.
Create a mantra for your life. If you aren't writing your story, someone else is writing it for you.
Listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eml-radio-talking-truth/id1498113483?i=1000558947971
Hello my friends!
I'm finishing up the transition away from Locals onto Substack and wanted to be sure each of you have made the necessary adjustments to your accounts. For those of you who have remaining months left on your paid support here, I have comped you the balance over at Substack.
This will be the final week I post content here.
I will resume the live recordings over there, starting with our first call on Friday, March 3rd at 9am/12pm. Invitations to join the Zoom calls will go out on Substack. Mark your calendars!
Also, be sure to download the Substack App! I love the app and find it so helpful in organizing content I want to read later by keeping it on my dashboard.
See you on the other side!
https://eviefatz.substack.com/
One of the biggest challenges in writing my book is not being able to share any of it along the way. Given my narcissistic need for constant approval and attention, not having any feedback is killing me. Even negative attention is better than no attention at all (which explains a lot of my behavior in life), so not only am I missing the praise but I also miss my haters.
I need to break out of this cave. Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk who writes Spoiler Alert on Substack, but you would know as the author of Fight Club, I got the idea to share some excerpts and things that won’t make the final edit. This will give us both what we need. I get some attention and you get some thought provoking words to make you think (and possibly laugh, cry or both.)
Today’s snippet is from the first draft of a chapter titled, Remove Your Kindergarten Name Tag. I am currently on my third revision and we can all be thankful for this. As I walk my readers through the dark hallways of my earliest years, and attempt ...
Wanted to pass this short video along. We think of health in very limited ways. Faith, nature, love, communality, shared human experience…all prove to be just as necessary, if not more so, than going to the gym.
I’ve always viewed and taught health from this perspective. It is my belief the lack of these essential elements is as big an issue in our culture as poor diet and lack of movement.
The takeaway-we can do better🙏🏼