Yes, you gave the city a championship.

Yes, you gave us thrills.

I am grateful.

However, dear Yankees, you didn’t need to go the extra mile and offer diabetes to your avid fans, did you?

The candies look cool, though. I still have this as a souvenir encased in a small glass dome.

Photo taken during the Yankees Parade last November

How do I say no to somebody who sincerely offers something that I know is bad?

No, this is not a solvent–sniffing kind of a dilemma or a kill–someone–for–me kind of a deal. This is, as you all know by now, about food.

I am aware that, in all honesty, that somebody, a woman I’m going to call Lady in Red, does not know that the item she gives out can kill me or her or the entire population in the long run. She is a very kind and generous person–a saint trapped in this wicked earth– a well-respected citizen and a very talented and skillful human being. However, she is not health conscious.

Every time I see her, she always hands me a bar of Baby Ruth. She is giddy and glad when she gives me those sweet nothings.

Growing up, I loved Baby Ruth, and she knows it that’s why she gives me those to make me happy. But I am a grown human being now, yet somehow, she thinks I still party with that candy.

The last time I remember eating Baby Ruth was when boys like me still had Alyssa Milano in the category of Babe To Be Imagined.

I am in a conundrum. A problem that even high-minded physicists would find more difficulty in solving than the problem of Dark Energy.

What am I going to do with the Baby Ruth bars that I have amassed in my fridge?

I can’t throw them away. I can’t give them away to kids on Trick or Treat Night. I can’t share it with anyone and more so, obviously, I can’t eat them. Why? Because I know it is bad.

If I do any of these options either guilt or diabetes will cause my demise.

But if I don’t do anything, Baby Ruth will eat my fridge and I would have no more space to even cool a slice of lemon.

What should I do? I don’t want to hurt Lady in Red’s feelings by asking her to stop. What’s the best way to handle this?

As I write this blog, Sheryl Mae, with arms folded, and deep in thought, is looking inside the fridge like Edwin Hubble peeping into a Black Hole.

Help!

PS: I am investigating Organic TV dinners and will post something about it tomorrow.

I mean, seriously, how could a heavily preserved and frozen packaged meal be called organic?

The place was festive as usual. Bright colored balloons hovered overhead and kids played around with reckless abandon–tumbling on trampolines, throwing light rubber balls, shrieking with unfathomable delight and gliding down a big plastic tube slide. It was a wonderland in a restaurant–Heaven on earth.

Amid the happy chaos and happy meals, there I was, all grown up, jumping for joy with a balloon tied on my left wrist and a juicy, aromatic triple decker burger with cheese and mayo in my right hand. I gave the signature burger one hard stare and attacked with full rigor and sincerity. When I emerged from my purposeful first bite on that greasy treasure of a sandwich, my face was decorated by colorful condiments of yellow, red, and white like I was a citizen of the United Colors of Benneton.

And oh, that first bite! As my teeth sank into that multi-layered food, the 100% all-beef patty gave a cute little resistance like a young girl playing hard to get. When it gave in, it exploded with all the goodness only a legendary fast food item could provide. It was delicious.

But that’s not all. There was another set of combo moves that could top that first bite experience. Expert fast food regulars like me referred to this as the Sick Choke Combo.

Let me explain.

The idea was to eat the burger and the French fries in alternating modes. Take a bite on the burger, and then stuff a handful of fries in your mouth. This would go on until the burger and the fries were no more– and there was no drinking–yet.

To complete this combo, you had to push the stagnant food in your mouth and throat down to your tummy with the ice-cold sugary innovation of man that is called soda. Regular Coke was the hardcore choice, of course. And then, as the food slowly traveled down your esophagus, a spoonful of hot fudge sundae would seal the deal. In today’s lingo: FTW!

We admired fellow junkies who could accomplish this combo with style. One favorite of mine, a friend named Toto, grooved to the complex rhythms of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s One Note Samba while performing the trick. Really smooth!

There was nothing better than this for us fast food junkies.

You see, even back then, I adored food–in a wrong kind of way. Not to mention that the food I romanced then is now universally known as junk. I could be in denial about this for as long as I can– or until my first stroke or my first symptoms of blindness due to diabetes. I knew all along that what I was putting in my body were unhealthy. But I could not accept it. I was like loving the wrong girl for all the wrong reasons.

Now I am taking steps to accept this truth and change my lifestyle. That is why I am posting these stories out to the vast cyber universe– to remind me where I was and where I am going.

If I don’t remind myself, heaven help me, I am scared I might  go full circle and live the fast food junkie’s life all over again.

If there is any real struggle in this quest to eat real and healthy food, it is the struggle to avoid junk. It is the epic battle, the ultimate confrontation, and the war to end all wars. I am fighting it.

If Junk Food Anonymous exists, it would be me who would have founded it. Yes, I am a recovering addict. I dug my claws into every bag of that stuff and grabbed the chips like how a trapeze performer would grab the arms of his or her partner after a mid-air somersault.

I ate microwaveable popcorn like everyone else: grabbing a handful and stuffing it all in my mouth with speedy precision. The only difference was I did it with a sinister grin.

I was addicted like that. I felt like I have taken advantage of the world every time those pieces of Doritos cracked inside my mouth. I felt victorious–high like a cokehead. I ate junk with purpose-with conviction.

Now, I am off it. Thanks to the wealth of information I acquired about the many evils of unreal food. But do I ever get tempted to wash down a mouthful of chicken nuggets with bubbly soda? Hell, yeah. Everyday. It is like the devil himself assigned several of his minions to tempt weaklings like me to open that can of soda, dance around a tray of Lays, stuff myself with nuggets.

It is real war. A real struggle. Here I am, resisting multi-billion dollar companies that spend fortunes on marketing so that I succumb to my cravings. I flip a magazine page and lo and behold, a glossy advertising spread of a gorgeous girl in a bikini somewhere in a tropical island munching on corn chips. I stare, I shake, and I drool. I open my smart phone and there it is again:  a buy one take five special offer from a popular doughnut store.

We all know how bad junk food is. It causes diabetes, hypertension, heart ailments, and cancer, and yet, it is still out there being marketed to all of us like we need it. Heroin kills but we don’t see billboards promoting it. Neither do we see a Superbowl commercial exalting the wonders of Speedball. Or a cannabis TV spot with mayor Bloomberg saying he approves the message.

When I checked the ingredients of most of my favorite junk, I was convinced that these are killers on the loose. There is nothing natural about this food. It is a creation of the industry to make money out of surplus corn and make each and every one of us size XXXL.

Here’s a breakdown of the ingredients that make up a bag of Doritos Tortilla Chips Natural Ranch and you’ll see:

Ingredients:

Whole Corn, Vegetable Oil (Contains One or More of the Following: Corn, Soybean and/or Sunflower Oil), Corn Maltodextrin, Salt, Tomato Powder, Corn Starch, Lactose, Whey, Nonfat Milk, Corn Syrup Solids, Onion Powder, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Monosodium Glutamate, Cheddar Cheese (Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), Dextrose, Malic Acid, Buttermilk, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Sodium Acetate, Artificial Color (Including Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5), Sodium Caseinate, Spice, Citric Acid, Disodium Inosinate, and Disodium Guanylate.

Wow, some of the stuff looks like when mixed together could create a nuclear bomb.  What are these? Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5- sounds like Bioman to me.

Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate? These are MSGs in disguise.

Now let’s compare this to the ingredients of a real traditional homemade tortilla.

Ingredients:

For the corn flour (Nixtamal)

3 cups dry corn kernels

6 cups water

2 heaping tsp. pickling lime

When the dough is made, they combine it with these:

pinch of salt
1 cup warm water.

Wow! That’s it! What a difference!

All the ingredients are familiar. So familiar, I think I can make tortillas myself. Perhaps, I could bake these so it becomes crunchy like chips? I don’t know.  Of course it wont be as tasty and perhaps as addictive as Doritos, but at least it is real and not some thing made up of Biomen and atomic bombs.

As I continue my struggle to keep myself junk food free, I do hope that many of you dear readers are in a similar quest to know what’s in the food you are eating. We deserve to know what we eat.

Links: Doritos Tortilla Chips  ingredients • homemade tortilla ingredients/recipe.