For the past few months, our family has tried to eat healthier. Organic instead of conventional, cooking at home instead of eating out, actual bananas and strawberries rather than the miniature, gummy imitations.
But it’s hard to stay the course. Kids eat dozens of snacks and meals in a day, the nutritional fabric is destined to unravel.
The evolution happens so slowly, so microscopically, I don’t even realize our family’s diet is morphing into junk food. But during a busy week, I’m willing to call anything healthy, just to get some food on the table. Including bacon pancakes.
The progression happens like this: we start with dinners that would make a nutritionalist applaud (organic red peppers stuffed with grass-fed beef and fresh tomato sauce). Our snacks are paleo, vegan, and organic (celery sticks and homemade almond butter). For lunch,it’s bento boxes of free-range chicken breast and hummus. Treats are Cuties or peaches with homemade whipped cream.
But then I get bored or overwhelmed with all the shopping, chopping, and meal-planning. Our diet shifts from healthy to healthy(ish). Pre-packaged containers of hummus and pretzels, store-bought cookies sweetened with dates by held together by preservatives, organic mac and cheese from a box that’s only healthy(ish) because the name is something like, Nature’s Love, and the cardboard has been recycled.
In other words, I’m justifying, refusing to acknowledge reality. Like a common-law marriage, I’m still declaring we’re not eating junk food, even though our lifestyle is obviously telling a different story.
Our eating habits eventually decompose to the laughably “healthy.” Happy Meals for the kids, but we chose the apple slices and milk instead of fries and soda. A Chick-fil-A salad for me, which I eat at red lights while shuttling the kids around. Go-gurt and string cheese with pepperoni bits inside it.
And then last night, I’m searching the pantry for a quick dinner and decide I’m hungry for pancakes. If organic junk food is the gateway drug, pancakes for dinner is the all-out, “we are addicted and we just don’t care anymore” moment.
Or, perhaps it was the next moment when I worried instant pancakes might be a few too many carbs for kids who still had to sit still to do their homework. Maybe some protein would help the kids process all that sugar?
The moment I looked at my kitchen, with the instant pancakes frying in (grass-fed!) butter and topped with greasy bacon was my AA moment, my we-have-fallen-off-the-wagon realization. I had arrived at the place no mom committed to healthy eating wants to find herself. Back to square one.
So, this weekend, I’m back to the grocery store, with high ideals about only eating local and organic. Get out of our pantry, organic potato chips! We are done with corn-syrup juice! No more fast food. This time, we eating clean forever.
Except bacon. Bacon gets to stay.
Because, in case you were wondering, it’s really delicious in pancakes.
