So, today is a coworker’s birthday which means there are donuts and muffins and a giant chocolate sheet cake. I totally nommed on a giant blueberry muffin for breakfast but at lunch time I need some protein! And thus I headed out for some Chinese food.
It was takeout, one of those whole-in-the-wall places, and I was not the only person waiting for my order. We all chatted, like you do, and the other woman there said, “Oh, I had one of those 100-calorie breakfast bars so I AM STARVING.”
Now, I know it has been addressed all over the place which means I am late to the 100-calorie pack party, but DAMN, I hate those things.
They are a false rationing. They say, “THIS many Cheezits is appropriate, THIS many tiny cookies, THIS many whatever the hell else we decide to package this way.”
This poor woman, as we talked, all she could think about was food. She really WAS starving, because, come on, 100 calories for breakfast? But it didn’t seem to have occurred to her that she could, you know, have something else or another breakfast bar or SOMETHING so that she wasn’t freaking out by the time lunch rolled around.
I was recently accused, in an unapproved comment, of wanting people to be fat. I don’t actually care if people are fat or not. I just want people to be happy. And I don’t think rationing out life at 100 calories a pop is an effective tool in the toolbox of happiness.
“THIS much energy is all that is appropriate. THIS sense of hunger without quite as sharp an edge is all that is appropriate. THIS is all the nutrition you need to start your day.”
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I had one of those 100 calorie packs of Oreos yesterday (left over in my desk from my pre-FA days) and it tasted just awful (not because it was expired either…I’m relatively new to FA). Might as well eat cocoa flavoured sawdust. I find it such a shame now when people beat themselves up about “bad” food and overindulging, but I still don’t have the guts to speak up against dieting.
Why are people so afraid of fat? It’s just fat! We are told to starve ourselves to fit in and it’s crap and part of the whole dysfunction. Makes me SO mad. That woman needs some protein for goodness sake!
If I had 100 calories for breakfast, well, I’d have my own seat on the commuter train, that’s for sure. People would be put off by the teeth-baring and the bear-like snarling.
Even if you go by the 2000 calories per day guideline on the “food pyramid” you should be eating more like 500-600 calories for breakfast. Like, an egg mcmuffin (oh noes!) or a bowl of cereal, turkey sausage patty, and a serving of fruit.
I boycott those 100 calorie packs both for environmental reasons (less calories per container=more containers) and anti-diet reasons. I saw some Jello pudding packs like that and I was like, right, because eating 100 calories of pudding is sooooo much more virtuous than the…150 calories in the regular size. What a crappy gimmick.
OMG I HATE those things!!!!
My mother has now become obsessed with this whole new stupid 100 calorie rule. If the box says “100 calorie packs” she buys them like they were the holy grail of thinness.
And 100 calories for breakfast!! I’m sorry, but she must be having some really crappy mornings. I don’t think anybody can operate well without a good breakfast.
100 calories for breakfast? I would be the crankiest person on earth. You are suppoed to eat MORE for breakfast to get you through the day! Or at least until lunch. *sigh*
Amen and amen. Rationing is so at the heart of what is wrong with diet culture. Your last sentence says it all.
It settles a person squarely into living from a worldview of scarcity instead of a worldview of abundance.
Lily, i’m totally with you on hating those things for environmental reasons. Now, scared dieters can buy less food for more money, with more packaging.
Food companies are smart – they profit off of our fear, anxiety, need for convience, need for comfort, etc, when REAL food/NOURISHING food, SATISFYING food could do this all along—albeit, not in 100 calorie portions.
I think the average person has no idea how affected they are by marketing. It makes me sad.
I like those things just as a hold me over until I can get some real food. I am going on 26 weeks pregnant so I get starving hungry at the drop of a hat…
I also like them for my son as it does ration the sweets for him…he is only 3 and if I let him eat those things all the time he wouldn’t eat any real food like veggies or meat or anything…they are good for a treat for him in between meals.
But I only get them for the size…they fit neatly in the purse or diaper bag…not because they are 100 calories and only if I don’t feel like buying a regular package that day.
We made the mistake of getting 90 calorie granola bars once. We couldn’t find the regular kind and I thougth they would do…NOT. They were nasty. Now I just don’t get them if I can’t get the regular kind!
I would like to find out who started the whole 100 calorie thing. It’s evil genius.
The concept may be appalling, but it was marketing genius. Companies are selling a lot less product while charging considerably more for it.
I bought one box of something (chips maybe?)when the 100 cal fad was just starting. I thought it would be a convenient snack size to throw in my brown bag lunch. Ha. When you open the packet and discover it’s mostly air with one or two lonely chips hiding at the bottom of the bag you definitely start obsessing about food. It’s like a tease more than it is an actual snack.
Of course, all those lean cuisine type meals are predicated on the same thing — give you a ridiculously small portion that leaves you feeling like, okay, I’ve had the hors d’oeurve, now where’s the actual food?
I’m sure those 100 calorie packs make a nice on the go snack, but as an actual meal? That’s just messed up.
It’s about controlling people, not about nutrition or satiety or anything that would make sense. As long as you can keep people obsessed with stuff like this, they’re too busy to effect the change they want to see in the world.
My philosophy: if you’re hungry, eat already. Yes, you CAN eat.
Oh gawd! My coworker and I used to buy those things! But as snacks after or with lunch, not as breakfast. That makes me so sad to hear those things from otherwise intelligent people. How did we get so dumb as a society? *sigh*
The fact that the poor woman was “starving” after her 100-calorie “breakfast” (would your body even notice its fast had been broken? not sure mine would) should have been a HUGE clue that 100 calories is not a meal for her.
If we lived in a sensible world, that is. Which we don’t. Which is why we’re talking about 100-calorie packs in the first place, I suppose.
i actually have a cereal bar (<100 calories) and nothing else for breakfast every day. but that’s because i’d rather enjoy my lunch and dinner and don’t care much for breakfast!
oh and i kind of *do* like those 100 calorie packs, because when i get “the munchies” i hate having to buy a huge bag if i just want a couple of (chips, cookies, whatever). you can always eat 2,3 or 10 100 calorie packs.. if you feel “virtuous” or “guilty”, well, that’s all in your mind
Phooey on 100 calorie packs! Starting your day on one of those is like trying to drive cross-country on a quarter tank of gas: you’re going to run out of fuel very, very quickly and not be able to accomplish anything serious.
Me? I had a bowl of cereal with blueberries and whole milk and coffee. Oh, and two pieces of Easter candy. It’s coming up on 12:30, and now I’m starting to think (clearly and cheerfully) about what I’d like to eat next.
Think about it. If you had dinner at six in the evening, didn’t have a before bed snack, and slept until six in the morning, that’s twelve hours without eating…and then you expect 100 measley calories to get you through your mornng productively? How messed up is that as a theory?
I *like* small size packages for certain things. I usually keep a small package of TJ’s trail mix (one of the fruit and nut ones) in my bike bag as Emergency Food. A full size bag is too much for me to eat at once if I’m bonking, but the little one is just right for restoring sanity. Then I can think again and figure out if I need to stop for lunch or if the trail mix is enough for me to get home. And yes, the little bags are more like 220 calories. I could maybe use the damn diet snack ones, but most stuff sold that way is stuff I hate to eat.
The last thing I need if I’m bonking is to figure out how to manage a big, spill prone bag of Emergency Food. And yeah, the real solution is to eat properly, but I don’t always manage that.
When I was eating disordered, I went through a phase in which I wouldn’t eat anything that contained more than 100 calories. Good thing the diet junk-food wasn’t around then. But I rarely even eat breakfast now, so the expectation that everyone ought eat 500 – 600 calories for breakfast isn’t for everyone. I just eat when I’m hungry, whatever time that may be.
I saw some Jello pudding packs like that and I was like, right, because eating 100 calories of pudding is sooooo much more virtuous than the…150 calories in the regular size. What a crappy gimmick.
I find this to be really quite laughable, considering the husband and I get the sugar-free version of a competitor’s brand and they’re only 40 calories. The sugar-free brand isn’t even promoted as “diet” and yet it is more “diet” than the stuff that is promoted as diet.
I’ve occasionally eaten a breakfast bar for breakfast, but that’s usually because when I just wake up I’m not feeling in the mood to eat much for a few hours. Somewhere near two hours after I’m up I can finally manage real food. I can’t imagine going all morning on only 100 calories, I’d be ready to eat my keyboard by 10:30. How do people focus on their work when all they can think about is food?
I get sick of seeing all this low-cal diet food when I go grocery shopping. I’ve said it before, it’s so hard for us to afford to get enough calories at our house at the best of times, it’s even worse when all our food choices have been made “lite”. No, no, give me the full fat, full carb, real thing. I don’t want to starve!
Anyone read Pratchett & Gaiman’s “Good Omens”? Those 100 calorie packs totally remind me of the stuff that Famine was doing. People are paying big bucks to starve themselves while actual poor people are having trouble affording real food. It aught to be a bigger sin than Gluttony in my book.
100 cal for breakfast…not so much…but i actually like some of those snacks, but i also dont have a prob eating more than one if i really want to. for me its just a mental stop to see if i really want more and helps avoid the mindless “omg i ate the whole bag?” snacking.
Godless Heathen – have you by chance ever read The Screwtape Letters? There’s a delightful bit in there about how people are so busy avoiding the Gluttony of Excess that they fail to notice that the Gluttony of Delicacy is just as bad.
I think the point is that this woman thought 100 calories is all she was allowed for breakfast, even if she wanted more than that. Some people aren’t “breakfast people” and that’s fine. I know it takes me a few hours after I get up before I can eat anything. But once I can, I do. But this poor woman was torturing herself with, “I’m SO hungry but I’m not ALLOWED to eat anything, bad appetite, BAD!”
Oh, yeah, 100 calorie packs. Guess they solved the Obesity Epidemic with those, didn’t they? :eyeroll:
Man, back when I was starving myself and eating barely 1,000 calories a day, I was so pissed off all the time.
Anyway. I feel bad for that woman.
You are right about the toolbox of happiness. I want to expand on that metaphor, because it is awesome. This kind of rationing is not an effective tool.
I like the 100 calorie packs too, and use them kinda like Dani while I’m getting my body re-trained to realize that when it is hungry, I AM going to feed it, and exactly what it is asking for. The 100 cal pack (or a snack pack, either works) is just kind of a check point. Gives me a chance to say “Am I still hungry or do I want to quit?” Once I’ve made that assessment, I can either eat another bag or I can go on with my day.
Breakfast? Not my thing. I love breakfast foods, just not at breakfast TIME. Usually my breakfast is a homemade smoothie: 8oz of yogurt, a 10 oz can of mandarin oranges with juice, a small banana, and a handful of some sort of berry (strawberries, blueberries, etc.) or other fruit. It all adds up to about 500 calories, but I don’t have to force myself to eat it and my entire day is a lot more productive for it.
I’ve discovered that even though I don’t really enjoy eating at breakfast time, I NEED to if I want to get anything accomplished. Smoothies are my compromise. Anything else and I’m forcing myself to eat and not enjoying it at all.
I totally resent the existence of these things too! It seems like an extremely wasteful use of packaging in service of a pretty questionable goal.
I’m not a fan of the packs either (at least I’ve never bothered buying them) but I don’t know – if that woman is anything like me, she’s just not hungry in the morning, or whenever she first wakes up. It sounds like she has no general aversion to eating – after all, she was there to get food because she was so hungry. The problem is, when you’re on a work schedule, and you’re just not hungry until an hour or two after you get up (as I’m not) then you may have to wait until lunch, so you might just eat *something* – even a stupid little 100 calorie bar – because you know you will be hungry before you can really eat. I’m lucky in that I can eat at my desk when I feel like it, so by the time my commute is over and I’m here a little while and genuinely hungry, I don’t have to wait. But maybe she’s just not that lucky.
Of course maybe she is dieting.
At any rate, yeah, I don’t like the packs either, I guess. Though I almost bought a big sack of them because they were on sale at a price that would actually be a savings (over the large boxes or bags) and it was a wide variety of stuff. Thought the kids might like little various snacks, or maybe even me. But I figured best not to support them and passed it by anyway.
Dani – awesome point about the gluttony of delicacy! Hehe, I love my C.S. Lewis but I haven’t read Screwtape in quite a few years.
I prefer to buy the snacks in the big bags and simply repackage them into smaller portions since it is more cost effective that way. I refuse to spend a small fortune on what would only cost pennies if I bought the big bag.
I don’t eat breakfast (can’t, makes me ill), but if I did I certainly would want something more substantial then a snack pack of whatever comes in those packets.
OMGWTFBBQ.
What TropicalChrome said. They’re controlling to the point of being sadistic, with the air and the six chips, or crackers, or whatever, in the bottom of the bag. Blarghh!
Plus I hate those things, marketing genius though they may be, because your body’s insulin spikes, like it’s going to actually digest something, for what? For NO NUTRITION! That’s the part I don’t get. Why would you eat one of those things when you can’t even run your body on it? Can’t even start your day on it?!?
I have sworn I will never eat ANYTHING from one of those packs. Ever. ( I have so far kept my vow.) Like, if I am on a desert island with someone and that is the last bit of food we have to last another 50 years, they can have the pack and I will drink the seawater and eat leaves — I’m sure the leaves have more vitamin B.
/shrieking rant
Lily, peachface, have you been snooping round my breakfast pantry again? Come now, darling, have another apple. It’s only 100 calories!!
The 100 calorie pack is no more of less evil than the 32 ounce beverage or an 18 ounce steak. When people want to feel they are getting a great “bargain,” they buy a bigass package of more food than they need to eat for a week, and feel good about themselves and their bargain-hunting. When people want to feel righteous and skinny, or have someone else control their appetite, they order 100 calorie packs. The big joke is, people doing 100 calorie breakfasts use them as a justification to eat the house down the rest of the day. If they ate enough not to starve at breakfast, they could probably control their appetite better.
I’m part of a family of four. As such we occasionally visit the local food pantries to stock up on things. (You’d be amazed at how much food goes bad because people are too ashamed to hang out at the food pantry. It’s not just for the homeless!)
This past weekend the husband came home and in the food pantry box were a big box of *cringe* 100 calorie packs of Planters Peanut Butter Cookies.
I threw them in the “snacks for the kids” bowl and went on my merry way. It was almost as interesting as last month when we got a *whole case* of that Special K Protein Water.
Five grams of protein. In water. Mind blowing…we got 24 of them and the retail on this is $5.99 for a four pack!
I tend to think that stores donate the “slow moving” items – so hopefully this means people aren’t so crazy to think that 5g of protein in water is food.
OH! I almost forgot! The whole point of this comment was to say I don’t think you want everyone to be fat, I think you want everyone to be content in whatever body they’re in! (Content…possibly even *gasp* happy?!)
*snork* at least she _had_ breakfast, most women who are trying to diet skip breakfast entirely which of course slows down their metabolism and causes the body to go into starvation mode and store more of (guess what) fat! I think we can all thank the media for women starving themselves and/or skipping breakfast when trying to lose weight, its pretty ironic and sad. If anything, having a big meal at the beginning of the day would be wiser – if not from a weight-loss perspective, but from a functional, have a better and more productive day perspective… The two eggs, wheat toast, turkey sausage and hash browns are doing quite well in my gullet this morning, thanks.
You know what’s as weird as the 100 calorie packs? There’s a brand of yogurt being marketed called “0 Percent Plus.” The name sends chills down my spine. (Apparently it has almost no calories and adds in all the calcium and protein you’re missing. Instead of just… getting it from regular yogurt.)
We just need to wise up about the 100 calorie packs. They are–no more and no less–than another marketing ploy by the corporations to sell more stuff. They aren’t “better” for us or “proper” sizes or anything else. It is completely up to us whether or not to buy into the madness.
I feel bad for the 100 calorie breakfast lady becasue I’ve been down that road. I’ve tried to live on 1 or 200 calories for breakfast, and/or lunch, and/or dinner. I KNOW darn well what happens: eventually I freak out and eat the entire 8 pack of KFC AND a Ben & Jerry’s for dinner one night!
I’m still not “right” in my head about food, but hopefully I’m getting better.
PS. How bad to we hate those ninnies on the Special K commercials?
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[...] March 28, 2008 Filed under: fat acceptance — Dani @ 1:45 pm If The Rotund is late to the 100-calorie pack party, then I’m hanging around the front yard the next morning trying to snag some empty beer [...]