Sweet Little Sixteen

Sweet Little Sixteen - I'm sure that by now you know me that well that you can tell that the title once more is meant to be - tongue in cheek - misleading and not right away too obvious. Of course, I'm not going to talk about THE milestone of every US girl turning 16 but rather about the hideous female pants size 16. When I moved here, I was still a solid 10, but by now I've crept up an impressive 3 (x2) sizes. Happy Birthday, sweet buttocks! You've finally reached 16! Needless to say, I am not thrilled about this gradual development at all, but believe it or not, this is actually not the point here, at least not today. As you can tell from my last couple of posts, I've been reflecting quite a bit on nutritional faux pas lately. Just because food is abundantly available in this country 24/ 7, this does certainly not automatically shift the blame of being as heavy as never before from me to ... well, unknown. Sure enough, I can only blame myself for regularly shoving too much of all that unhealthy crap into my mouth, nobody else. Am I addicted to certain foods? Absolutely as food is really comforting and soothing for my soul. So are most folks by the way because the food industry deliberately alters the chemical make- up of foods to boost their sales significantly. Let's take a closer look at the so- called main food culprits which are all known to keep both the appetite and the Body Mass Index (BMI) going through the roof. Salt I talked about twice this month already. How and why water retention caused by an excessive salt intake eventually leads to permanent weight gain is still a mystery to me though. Nothing really indicates a predicament like this from just ingesting too much sodium. Then there's sugar which - if consumed frequently and too much of- bears a terrific chance of developing Type II Diabetes. You certainly do not wish to ultimately end up having to stick to a drastically reduced choice of foods plus artificial insulin for the rest of your life. Last but not least, fat is generally condemned ever the more for it supposedly builds up plaque and hence clogs the arteries quite possibly resulting in a heart attack or stroke. Sure enough, a few fats do still make a difference, but let's be honest, the overall uneducated opinion is rather negative. Hm, fat alone seems pretty impotent to me. After all, I know of nobody who would just lick a stick of butter or enjoy a few spoon- fulls of lard. As usual it is the combination of all the components that matters. What still tastes best (to me) is sugar and fat, and lately they've started to even add salt to that lethal duo. Personally, I don't care for this triple combo, but the high number of followers speaks for itself as none of that would exist otherwise. In a documentation about foods that are enriched with salt and sugar alike, I learnt that we quickly start craving more of the same because of its highly sophisticated chemical composition. This, on the other hand, will eventually lead to ailments and diseases worse than we've known so far, and weight gain is just the tip of the iceberg. On this note, I just hope to be able to avoid having to say Happy 18 within the coming years.