I think that I shall never see a Twinkie quite as lovely as thee

Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better. ~ Robert Redford

So I’m on This Damn Diet (heretofore known as TDD) -- more commonly known as the Weight Watchers program. It’s not a crazy eating plan, it promotes healthy food choices while providing a sensible, workable, dare I say flexible plan which is very conducive to the way people live today.

And two weeks into this thing, I have to say that it’s good. And it seems to be working. I’ve got more energy, the jeans I wore today hung a little looser than usual and I just generally feel good.

But... that’s not to say that things are all happy-happy-joy-joy. Surprise surprise surprise. [/Gomer Pyle]

It’s bad at breakfast. My favorite meal of the day. I love breakfast food -- eggs, bacon, cheese grits, hash browns, sausage, pancakes, muffins, toast with jelly -- all washed down with a big old glass of milk. Kashi Go Lean Twigs, Bark and Berries just isn’t the same thing. Not that I ate all those things for breakfast before TDD. But now that I’m more disciplined (heh heh heh -- I figure if I keep telling myself that, it will finally come true), all those delights just seem that much more tantalizing.

But here’s the biggest problem so far.

I have a MAJOR sweet tooth, one that frequently craves the delights of processed food delicacies, such as Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs and Twinkies. The more unpronounceable the ingredients, the better. The best part of said foodstuffs is, for me, the yummy creme filling. Mmmmm.

My all-time favorite though, was the Dolly Madison-produced snack cakes known as Zingers. Mmmmmm. They featured the Peanuts gang in their advertising and often sported a character on the packaging. Look at this vintage ad:



See how happy Lucy is, all smiling and relaxed, having undoubtedly just consumed a delicious chocolate Zinger (with creme filling!) for an after-school snack. Who wouldn’t love something that could make crabby old Lucy so delightful.

Needless to say, here in WW land, such pleasures as Zingers come at a price -- I haven’t looked it up in my handy-dandy WW Food Information Book, but I suspect that a Zinger is worth at least double-digit WW points. But I’m not without options in this arena. The good people in R&D at WW have created a treat for people just like me. I give you

The Weight Watchers Twinkie



Here it is, fresh out of its cute little wrapper, placed next to my ever-present Mac Lipglass, so you can get an idea of the scale and size of the thing. It's like two bites, three max.





And... here is that same WW Twinkie, cut open. Do you see any delicious creme filling? I think not. Fat Free Reddi Whip isn’t bad -- you think the WW people could have sprung for even just a schmear for the center. But no.

The saving grace of this item is that it's only ONE WW point. It doesn't taste all that bad. And there's icing on top. There's just not a lot of it to enable me to savor the flavor. Even after trying to take my time biting and slowing chewing said bite, that sucker’s down the hatch in under a minute. Tops.

Did I mention there’s no creme filling?

But it beats the hell out of some other one point options: a complete package of celery. Three hundred and fifty-seven mushroom caps. A head of cauliflower, steamed, no cheese sauce. So I’ll stop kvetching and count my blessings that someone took the time to make these little gems for junk food junkies like myself.

I honestly think I’ve gone round the bend a bit here, waxing poetical and ranting methodically about a damn diet snack cake. Maybe because I’m denying my physical body the wondrous taste sensations that are junk food products, my mind is picking up the slack and bordering on the obsessive. It doesn’t help that I’m sitting in my office, writing this, surrounded by at least 100 cookbooks and can look to my left into my kitchen where my chrome Kitchenaid mixer beckons me to knead some bread dough in its shiny metal belly.

I’m not going to worry about this just yet. When I start writing Odes to Wasa Multi-Grain Crispbread -- then it’ll be time to call the mental health authorities.