The Great Coconut Milk Caper

Recently, I went to the health food store with my neighbor. We had a good time exploring all the nooks and crannies together, and I succumbed to the occupational hazard of getting way too excited about sales on organic quinoa and garbanzo bean flour for my gluten-free brownie recipe. While this in itself may be a sign that I need to get a real life, it was not the most disturbing occurrence of the day.

During my giddy tromp through the aisles of wholesome goodness, I came across a shiny new product. With a *coupon*. The Almond-Coconut Milk was practically begging me to pick it up and enjoy it. And so I picked it up. And I did NOT enjoy it.

 The manufacturers were not lying when they said it was unsweetened. I assumed that the nutty flavor of the almonds or the natural sweetness of the coconut would create a goodness all its own. Not even a show featuring a flatulent 6-year-old pageant girl named Honey Boo Boo could be more wrong. I desperately tried to save the milk with my favorite liquid stevia, but it was a lost cause. There was no salvaging the damage done to my taste buds.

Even though I had little hope of TLC making a show about my epic plight through the health food world, I really had wanted to be some sort of cool trend-setting milk drinker. There were a million problems with that premise already--not the least of which was the fact that the words "cool" and "trend-setting" are rarely seen with "milk-drinker." The bad taste that the almond-coconut milk left in my mouth didn't help my cause, either. I realized that sacrificing taste for the sake of looking like some uber chic health class teacher was not worth it.

See, there are a lot of healthy beverage options other than unsweetened coconut milk, several of which I actually enjoy. In fact, on this same fateful day, I had also purchased unsweetened cranberry juice to blend into this amazing recipe that tricks me into drinking more water. You'll never guess which one I have almost polished off.

With my classes, I give my students a list of healthy foods they can choose from in order to attain maximum weight loss. While this list is designed to provide them with useful information for making great meal combinations, it is not meant to force them to choose items with a 0 GL just to make them look like health food superstars. Honestly, I think 0 GL artichoke should be savored in a spinach dip and not served up as a yucky substitute for  asparagus, the only 2 GL vegetable God created as a binge food. And there is no way on earth that I am going to force feed myself a 0 GL lemon when I could be having a 5 GL apple. *All* of the options on the list are perfectly good choices, and I want my girls to stock up on ones that they will actually eat, not just ones that appear "healthier." Seriously, I would much rather them have a vegetable they love with a low GL than one they "make" themselves eat with no GL at all. Otherwise, as soon as our class time is up, they'll get 0 GL from their veggies, but it won't be because they're making healthier choices...they simply won't be eating veggies at all. If they can't love the healthy choices they make, they will eventually stop making them altogether.

I'm not even sure this picture is relevant, but I can't help laughing every time I see it. So I put it in my blog. To enjoy forever.

A healthy lifestyle should be designed to work with a person's taste buds and not against them.  No, it doesn't mean that you eat Snickers because they make you happy, but it doesn't mean that any food that does must be automatically bad for you, either. This summer, I was almost addicted to watermelon. With every bite I savored, I didn't have to convince myself that having a 7 GL cup of this fruit was a good health choice; I ate it almost incessantly simply because it was a healthy choice I already loved. While my girls know that one cup of beans has about the same protein content as a palm-sized serving of chicken breast, I don't see the point in forcing someone who loves grilled chicken with peppers and pineapple to try to force down some pintos instead. Go with what you know, and then go with what you love!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drink some cranberry water and drain some coconut milk. And then maybe I'll follow up with the TLC folks, just in case they changed their minds about my TV series, after all.