Friday, October 27, 2006

One thing I was never able to comprehend about grown-ups as a kid was why they chose to eat such shit cereal. My way of thinking was that once you're old enough to choose what you eat, you can eat all the Frosted Wheats, Coco Pops and Weetos you like. (Lucky Charms are pushing it a bit – much as I crave their magically delicious marshmallows, you can only get them in cybercandy and £5.99 a box is fucking ridiculous.)

This is what I thought would happen anyway and as usual, it turns out that I was a very naive child. At lunchtime, foraging in the dishwasher for a bowl to wash and put soup in, I remembered that my sarky cynical side is counterbalanced by occasional flights of relentless optimism, and this was one case where I'd overstepped the bounds of flight.

I don't know whether it's people in the media specifically, supposedly caring about their figures while they sit on their arses in front of a monitor all day, but eating what looks like a bowl of shredded glass can't be good for you, whatever the packet says. Alpen. Porridge. Special K. All Bran. (Actually, I'm lying, nobody eats All Bran.) Anyway, when you come to wash it up it's just a load of beige bits washing miserably around the side of the bowl. If they'd had Coco Pops, this wouldn't be an issue. They're so delicious you eat them all. Do you scrape every last speck from a bowl of Alpen? Do you fuck, it tastes of boredom and gives you all the thrills of a 2p piece.

What annoys me even more about this obsession with 'healthy' breakfasts is the queues that start for the microwave. If you want a cup of tea, you have to fight your way between four women (it's always women, the boys get toast, or organic porridge from Crussh) lining up their porridge bowls. Last year it was worse because the Empire kitchen is the size of a small box, and as we shared it with Sneak, there were more ladies with health food regimes to squabble with. At least the Aloud kitchen is big enough to dance in.

I went on a health food regime once. I'd been on one before, but that was when I was forced to by my mum after she went through a phase of taking me to nutritionists and acupuncturists to see what was wrong with me (I was depressed, but apparently also deficient in copper, magnesium and something called radium). This regime was different because I chose to do it, and it was accredited by the Sunday Times Style section which is my blissful place of happiness.

Anyway, being pre-GI and written by nutters, it was based entirely around juice. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to live on juice before, but once you've forced a beetroot, carrot, lime and root ginger through a bargain bin juicer, you've worked up an appetite, and juice doesn't do it. It also failed to give me the skin of a 14-year-old princess. I have good skin anyway – or at least I do when I'm not living the drawn-out London season change – and I failed to get any bounce, vitality or joy from living on juice.

I lasted about four days on this ridiculous diet before giving up and buying a fish pie from Safeway. 99p vs many pounds. No brainer.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, you may not be aware of netiquette: upload images to your blogging service server and then post to your blog. Linking directly takes other people's bandwidth (and some of us pay for it).

BTW fun to read your blog.

-s

Kat said...

I'm not and am now inclined to care even less. You have no idea how much I loathe words like 'netiquette'.

Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Dear Lord! My comment is purely cereal based! Mature Orchestral Bleached Blonde, or MOBB, if you will (my mother to those who've met her!!) eats all bran every day. Indeed, she is a big fan of it, and attempts to make it more palatable by slicing banana into it. Seriously, the fun never stops in that house.
It's a non-stop breakfast rollercoaster ride.

Kat said...

I so bags calling Jean MOBB next time I see her. Mo'bran mo'problems.