Sunday, January 22, 2012

Who knew cookies could be good for you?

The war on food continues with new ammo! I just found an advertisement in my Sunday paper for Whuno Cookies (http://www.whonucookies.com/) and they appear to be the latest thing since sliced bread.

These cookies, which suspiciously resemble Oreos and Chips Ahoy, are packed with fiber, calcium and vitamin C. The ad, in fact, tells us three cookies can provide "as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal, as much calcium and vitamin D as an 8 oz glass of milk and as much vitamin C as a cup of blueberries." Isn't that fantastic?

Now, rather than eat oatmeal and blueberries and drink a glass of milk, you can scarf down three delicious cookies and be good to go, because we all know eating nutrition packed cookies is better for you than eating real food. It's so much easier to grab a couple of cookies than to sit down to a bowl of oatmeal and blueberries.

Of course, these nutritious cookies are aimed at kids, or parents of kids who want better nurtition for their children. We all know kids prefer cookies to spinach or oatmeal, in fact I know a lot of adults who prefer cookies to spinach and oatmeal, but does it really make sense to replace those foods with specially designed cookies?

The ingredients list for the cookies is suspiciously missing from the website, so I can't be sure, but I have an inkling there will be a lot of things in the cookies you won't find in the natural foods they replace.

The food industry constantly bombards us with replacements, things we can consume instead of real food that will supposedly act like real food where it counts [nutrition, taste] and not act like real food in the areas we fear [calories, fat]. I understand the concept of wanting to replace some of the junk kids like to eat with better choices - hey, if your kids are going to be eating cookies anyway, why not give them more nutirtious cookies, right? The only down side is, you're fostering a taste for cookies when learning to like real food will serve them better in the long run.

Have the milk and the oatmeal and the blueberries instead of a designer cookie. Who knows, maybe you'll be better off.