Has Variety Made Us Fatter?

When we were in Italy I actually began to get sick of Italian food. Seems unthinkable since if I were able to eat anything I wanted without any caloric consequences Italian food might be at the top of my list. One reason I think I started to get sick of it is Italian cuisine is very regional and since we spent most of our time in Roman we were basically just eating Roman food, not food from all over Italy.

When I was a kid lots of my friend’s mothers made the same menu every week, baked chicken on Monday, hamburgers on Tuesday, spaghetti on Wednesday, meatloaf on Thursday and fish on Fridays. Not only were the foods the same every week, but also they were prepared exactly the same way week after week, year after year. Hardly anybody was fat. Was it because they were just sick to death of eating the same foods?

I can remember going to my friend Gayle’s house. Her family was from Minnesota of Norwegian decent. Her mother made some kind of meatballs with sour cream that I thought was fabulous, but Gayle and her two brothers could hardly look at it since it was a weekly staple.

I know that if I taste a new food and I like it I eat much more of it than I probably need. And the exact opposite is true. I eat the same thing for breakfast 99 days out of 100; a bowl of High Protein Special K with a few berries and skim milk. It is a small bowl and I am perfectly happy just having that since my mouth is not dancing with excitement for a new taste.

Maybe I have ruined my family by trying lots of exotic cuisines. Can we blame Food Network for introducing Americans to the idea that you never have to eat the same thing twice in your whole life? Yes, there might be a few foods you try and want to eat again, but chances are they are really fattening and that makes them taste yummy.

I think repetitive eating is the secret behind those horrible diets like the cabbage soup diet. If you are forced to eat the same thing over and over you eventually just don’t want to eat much of it. I think the cow is out of the barn at our house, there is no chance to have a repeating one-week menu unless I am looking for a divorce. What about at your house?