How To Ruin Appetites

Last evening, I was with a dozen or so who were about to enjoy coffee and goodies. Those gathered were intelligent, mature people wanting an evening partaking in relaxed conversation. Coffee and tea poured, the accompanying treats were offered. The first topic that arose was the fact that the cream in the jug, was the lowest of fat content. Sentences were built around percentages of fat in  cream and rampant cringes observed at the great indulgence of sipping a tablespoon of it stirred into the beverages. I sipped my white wine, thank you very much, and eyed the cheese cake, longingly. After expressing their guilts over the skinniest cream, I have ever heard of, we saw the knife beginning its job of dividing up the luscious cake onto small plates. The trick apparently was to see how thinly it could be accomplished. The maker of the creation started in on her choice of the ingredients, and how this and that was done to prevent as little fat and sugar as possible into the recipe while ensuring its taste. I did taste the lemon but the rest had only vague hints of the expected sweetness of cheese and sugar that was not of a reduced kind.  Again, talk of dress sizes and the agonies of dieting to get into a size blankety blank rather than another with higher digits became the choice. When, oh when, were we going to discuss the climate, political or otherwise?  I saw  my blubbery self desperately wondering how I, someone who resigned the diet club long ago, could make enough polite hums and haws to appear at least part of the weighty conversation. Not possible, and finally I had to admit that, sorry, I wasn't part of the dieting mentality. Sympathy was tossed my way, though brief, and led to terse comments about their not wanting to have to throw out clothes if one's size increased and how expensive it would be. I noted the speaker seldom came to the group with garments that were anything older than a month. But having a generous mouthful of cheese cake, however short of sugar it was, prevented comment. The others, started in on their food intolerances. These ranged from wheats to pastas to cheeses to nuts and onward. Good bakers and restaurants were name-dropped: names of outlets that did not use milk products or animal fats, salt, sugar, cheese and used only things that were full of "lites" and "nons" and "lesses". To me, they all tasted like it, too. Talk turned into such as milk made from anything that didn't include cows or goats, sugar that came from a little bottle of liquid you could tuck into your handbag and meat made from beans. There was arm waving and great enthusiasm amongst the holders of the thinnest upper arms in the neighbourhood. The sugarless chocolate chip oatmeal cookies as yet to be served, that I anticipated eagerly,  apparently had raisins that were cranberries, oats of some kind of wheat that was said not to be, chocolate chips that were not chocolate and eggs sans yolks.  There was huge enthusiasm over the cookies passed around. Suddenly, although they looked good, they left the realm of any remotely high feelings of appeal to me. I knew that after the party, I would take my empty wine glass and go home to my friendly fridge that had nice fat yellow cheese, bread made from whole wheat spread with cow butter. I might even have a cup of hot chocolate made from real chocolate beans, laced with fourteen percent whipped cream and sweetened with brown sugar. Yum! As I waddled my ten extra pounds out of the room, waving bye bye at the bony women with their "little bits of extra" padding tucked in here and there to give themselves "shape",  I dropped the take away diet cookies into the bin and fled home to happiness where there are no rules to spoil the appetite or scales to worry over and no size fours on hangers.