“No vegetables, No dessert.” Mainstream indoctrination

conversationstarters

#1

Reading the newspaper is something I often avoid. Turning to the ‘Funnies’ page where there are comic strips and puzzles is usually the safest bet.

But this Australian comic strip message is straight out of 1975.

Ginger Meggs has the problem instinctively solved in the first panel. His mother is a sugar addiction blackmailer. So sad that this is regarded as a contemporary mainstream norm. It’s a 20th century hangover of dietary dogma that influenced poor parenting tropes.

Maybe I’m being too harsh?


(B Creighton) #2

I have to admit my parents did the same thing, and so did I - however, at times my wife was even worse and would give them the dessert first. Today I had coconut cake because it was my youngest son’s B-day, but these days I usually have a bit of whole fruit for dessert or the occassional blueberry goat cheese and crackers. I largely stopped processed desserts a few years back when I saw it was raising my blood sugar by the very next day 20 points or more. That made me realize just how bad this stuff is, and why heart disease is rampant.


#3

It sounds good to me (not now, it’s summer and I cling to my tiny vegs. sometimes)! No vegs, no (traditional) desserts :smiley: Vegs are loads better than desserts if you asked past me and I did love my desserts, I surely would have chosen my vegs (but I chose everything instead)… But vegs aren’t just tasty, they are juicy, crunchy (not all, sure but many are juicy, many are crunchy and some are both! sometimes they are both without much flavor but I can love something for its texture!) and just feel healthy despite they are carbs. But my body can handle a tiny amount of vegs (not as much as I had on my original keto, that carb amount messed with me)…
As a kid, though… I ate veggie dishes. So skipping the vegs would have resulted in barely eating anything (for veggie dishes. we still had pasta. with veggies so no veggies -> plain pasta). Not even grains as most veggie dishes here don’t come with that (some people eat them with bread). It had some protein with it but not so much. And my scrambled eggs had vegs inside… So I can’t relate to the kid in the comic, my reality didn’t allow such scenarios. (But good luck to take away my precious beloved vegs anyway.)

Yes, it’s sad. And I do eat desserts near the end of nearly every meal but they are good ones.

Mom didn’t really tried to influence my eating habits (beyond cooking for me so yes, there were limits, like we almost never had meat but it was fine by me - but I could go and buy groceries. why I almost never bought meat I don’t know. maybe habits. and my huge passionate love towards vegetarian items? I do remember I preferred potatoes and cucumber salads over chicken but of course, chicken is pretty useless. I loved pork but we rarely had it. what Hungarians were we… sigh). If I disliked some vegs, she never cooked it again. But I loved most vegs and fruits and almost everything else so she had an easy time anyway. And she cooked amazingly well.

Interesting. I hate desserts when hungry but I could end my meal with them in my carby past. Now I usually must eat some fatty protein (usually meat) after a dessert… I wonder how other people are, if they change on keto or something…

I have no idea about my BS and I really don’t care much (it’s my body’s job to keep it right) but I did quit eating a bunch of stuff 15-16 years ago and realized low-carb desserts usually taste much better too! Win-win! And I can make them the way I want, I just don’t make the ones with a high fat/protein ratio when I need to eat leaner. (Amounts matter though. Still, if my meat is fatty, I can’t afford extra super fatty items.)
I used to dislike cakes after I overate them on keto for years (I couldn’t avoid keeping my carbs low enough without them) - but now I like them again, my new protein-rich ones are different! They are still fatty as they are cakes but not as much.

My SO still makes his own desserts but I barely ever view them as borderline edible food. They are carbs with carbs, eating with carbs (sometimes chocolate, that’s the best scenario as that is a fat source, not a carb one. even after many years, I can’t understand the sugar/sweetness content of traditional chocolate. ours are nothing like that and it’s perfectly sweet…), definitely not my style. If I want to eat some unhealthy sugary food, I eat some fruit! I should keep that at the minimum though.


(KM) #4

I like the fortune cookie advice crawling up the left side too. Sort of a hidden message from someone who knew better than this strip in 1975. Must eat veggies, sugar addiction enabling, and plate clearing. The trifecta of disordered eating!


(Joey) #5

No veggies AND no dessert?
This was a loving 1970s carnivore mother at work.


(Cathy) #6

SAD. So many things wrong with this …


(B Creighton) #7

I should say it raised my BP 20 points or more… of course it raised my blood sugar… almost immediately LOL.


(B Creighton) #8

Sorry, you kinda lost me. What kind of desserts do you have with a high fat/protein ratio… R we talkin dairy fats? or something else. I’ve never really liked cake all that much except the super rich kinds like red velvet cake, carrot cake, coconut cake and prune cake. It’s the fat and the sugar together that makes dessert so bad … and all the other processed stuff, etc. Whole fruit helps satiate the sweet tooth, and also provides vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and soluble fiber … usually with low enough sugar that the body can handle it somewhat decently. It’s plum season here, and I am beginning to have some of those… Then it will be apples, which are a wonderful source of soluble fiber. Right now that is one of my best solutions, although I do make chocolate covered strawberries using cacoa powder sweetened with allulose or a sugar alcohol. Similar with a chocolate fat bomb I make with coconut oil and soaked chia seeds.


#9

Almost all I like, sadly :frowning: Desserts are very much about tons of fat if you ask me, it’s so hard to make them lean… I rarely even try but my newest cake is pretty good.
Well, a good ice cream is yolks and the fattiest cream (30% here), that’s pretty fatty. And there are sweet fat bombs, chocolate, cakes… Cakes tend to have tons of fat even when carby but when not, that’s even “worse” :smiley: My simplest cake is one yolk, 10g walnut and a tiny erythritol (and sodium bicarbonate with some acid). Quite fatty. I can make sponge cake with only as many yolks as whites but the cream will be way fattier… My cakes usually have zero added fat and they still way too fatty and it’s without icing! Because icing is mostly fat, it can’t be helped. At least if we don’t eat sugar but Mom made fatty icing too.
Oh I just realized high fat/protein ratio is individual too. Eggs are on the fence, if anything is fattier, that’s a problematically fatty item for me. I can’t lose fat eating as fatty food as an egg either. High protein need, smallish energy need, lots of fat to lose. And a love towards fat. Tough combo but solvable just give me another decade, 1.5 wasn’t quite enough. I can eat pretty lean now so I just need to avoid the siren song of fatty food.

Not really for me. I mean, maybe but when I want dessert, fruit doesn’t help. Fruit is in the fruit category and desserts are in another. Fruits just trigger my dessert desires… Obviously it’s highly individual. My SO is the same, he wants his fruit AND his dessert for every meal. (So not exactly the same as I don’t want the fruit. well my body doesn’t. I just can’t always resist.)

I don’t need those beyond what I get from my normal, satiating food. Anyway, if I eat right, my fruit intake is a few grams per day at most and it hardly has much nutrition… It can’t even help with Vitamin C (the important stuff I surely consume very little from my carnivore items. only the meat has some but I like to cook it into oblivion) as it barely has any…
Fiber is what I totally don’t need so that matters me the least (except that it mitigates the huge problem of eating too pure sugar. it’s not super useful even there, I super easily get unwell if I eat fruit day to day. when I think I can’t get sugar poisoned anymore, fruit season starts, I touch them a bit for a while and ouch).

Plum season here too! My SO is a fruit loving, sweets loving high-carber and even he said our new plum is borderline inedibly sweet. So he needs to eat it with something less sweet.
It’s Williams pear season too, another way too sweet fruit :frowning: And it’s not juicy and tasty enough when unripe! Life is cruel.
Summer apple season has passed already*, that was great, not super sweet.

*Except my miracle tree that caught fire and the firefighters went through it so it lay on the ground. almost fully broken… But it survived. It’s summer apple but tastes like normal apple and not nearly as soft, it’s a harder kind of apple. It bears fruit between the two kind, in August (summer apple season is in July).

Apple was the fruit that I banned on keto. I kept everything but apple, date and watermelon. My main keto fruits were banana, raspberry and lemon. Apple was impossible to fit into my carb allowance (I had 1-2, maybe 3g a day for fruits in total) and it was hard to eat in tiny amounts. I got better. 10g apple is a thing for me - if the apple is the right kind. Not for soft, tasty apples like summer apples but a summer apple is tiny, at least. 10g Granny Smith is a lovely portion. Tasty, sour and hard, I don’t want to eat much more than that - but it’s one of my favs.

I prefer chocolate covered banana (or sour cherries). The fruit doesn’t freeze into an ice cube like strawberries (the season is short so I keep them in the freezer and anyway, chocolate must go on frozen fruit so it gets crunchy in no time) and it sweetens the chocolate, no sweetener is needed. I rarely eat such things nowadays, though. A single banana often lasts for months…


(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

No vegetables and no dessert seems like a good way to eat. Just the meat, please, for me!