The Link Between Celebrations And Bad Eating Habits

It’s interesting how celebrations and food are linked together.  Take birthdays for instance.  This has been a busy weekend in our house, and the rest of the month will be the same.  We have a lot of birthdays to celebrate.  Which, of course, means lots of food.

Celebrations & Bad Eating Habits

I was bad, bad, bad this weekend.  We went to three (or four) birthday parties, depending upon how you count them.  Between the birthday cake, ice cream, and pizza there was little redeeming about my eating habits.

Friday afternoon included a birthday luncheon for a co-worker, and Friday night saw my wife decorating a birthday cake.  (In case you don’t recognize this little dude, his name is Pikachu, and he’s a Pokemon.)  She spent several hours mixing the icing and drawing this guy freehand.  Impresses the heck out of me.  I can’t draw stick figures.  But, there was powdered sugar everywhere, so we had takeout pizza for dinner.  That’s our usual fare on Friday nights.  No big deal.  Saturday began with a birthday party at lunch followed by more pizza.  Throw in a snack of roasted German pecans, and wrap the day up with yet another birthday party and more cake.  Tack on a Philly steak sandwich for dinner, and I can’t say I ate healthy at all on Saturday.

Sunday was a trip to visit family, where we had lunch followed birthday cake and ice cream.  We’ll do it yet one more time tonight.  Looking ahead at the rest of the month, we have at least three more birthday parties to attend.  And, of course, you can’t have a birthday party without cake.

Mind you, I’m not complaining.  I enjoy birthday cake as much as the next person.  Maybe more.  But I do find it interesting how much of the human experience is linked with food.  We do business lunches, and birthday cakes.  We toast people for accomplishments and have retirement parties.  Employees are rewarded with catered food and business clients are taken out for nice dinners.  All of these seem to firmly embed bad eating habits into our daily routine.

Now, to be fair, the sport of golf is an important part of many businesses.  But you don’t often hear someone suggest playing a tennis match to celebrate an accomplishment.  How about a good long group run?  I even once heard someone complain that he had ordered fresh-picked oranges shipped in from Florida for their employees at Christmas, and the entire box went untouched.

There must be some deep-seated philosophical reason for this bias against healthy eating and exercise.  There was a time, not too long ago, when sugared treats, cakes, and the like were not something to have every day.  Perhaps this is a holdover from times long gone by, when food and “treats” such as cake, for instance, were so much more difficult to attain.  If kids were lucky, they got a few pieces of hard candy on holidays and birthdays, and a serving of soda was a whopping 8 ounces.

I do know this.  This is one bias I won’t change.  I’ll go to the parties, and I’ll eat cake.  Hopefully they’ll just be smaller pieces.  Tonight is German Chocolate cake, and it is good.  I’ll have some, and I’ll enjoy it immensely.  Then I’ll hit the gym.  Tomorrow.