Can foods be friends? Definitely. Meet some of my crew...

When last we spoke, I wrote about snacking/grazing foods that get me into hot water.  For example, I’m still slightly horrified by the disturbing number of POINTS packed into a tin of Sabra hummus.  I think I always knew that it tasted too good to be true, but I didn’t realize how deadly it was.  I guess it’s good to know your enemies.

Yet, having all enemies and no friends seems like a sad and lonely way to go through life.  I have friends.  I really do!  And I like to imagine that that they like me just as much as I like them.  Even better, my friends are both fun and upstanding, responsible citizens.  They are a good influence on me, and they make me a better person.

Of course, I’m speaking metaphorically as I am referring to my food friends.  [Parenthetically, I feel the same way about the qualities of my human friends.]

The friends I would like to celebrate are my snack buddies.  So what does it take to become one of my snacking friends?  What lofty criteria must be reached to be able to call yourself my buddy?  How does a snacking food become fabulous in my world?  Here are some basic criteria:

1. You should take a while to eat.  Food works best if it can meet a basic time criteria and create the sensation that I’ve had meaningful eating experience.  If you can be eaten in three bites, you are not a true snacking friend.  Tiresome acquaintance at best.  
2. You should look larger than life.  That is, you should occupy a significant amount of spatial volume and create the illusion that you are a boatload of food.  Of course, you should be an optical illusion of sorts as you should also have a limited number of calories.  In Weight Watchers lingo, these are referred to as Filling Foods.  
3. You should taste good.  I tried to be snacking friends with saw dust, but I never could endorse the taste.  I am ambidextrous when it comes to choosing savory or sweet, so my taste can spread a fairly wide spectrum.  It helps that I’m not a picky eater, as this allows me to be fairly promiscuous in this dimension of choosing my snacking friends.  

This apple seems super friendly!  

So without further adieu, here is my current snacking buddy lineup:

• Apples:  love apples, particularly Fuji apples.  I also appreciate that one apple can be sliced into eights, which in turn can be allocated to two bites each.  That’s 16 bites of food.  And only 2 POINTS.  
• Non-fat Greek yogurt:  he doesn’t taste awesome by himself, but he plays very nicely with other friends.  He also contains lots of protein with relatively few calories, so he stays with me long after he’s consumed (in other words, he has outstanding satiety – an excellent character trait).  I have been known to organize play dates with Greek Yogurt and an apple.  
• Grapes:  I heard a friend call grapes nature’s candy, and I have to say that perfectly sums up this delicacy to me.  I love the taste, and they take a long time to eat as long as I spend time with each grape individually.  Which is good.  Grapes also go nicely with the otherwise slightly boring Greek yogurt.  
• Pop corn:  I’d like to become someone better friends with this guy.  This is another snacking food that takes a lot of time to consume, yet has very little tag-along calories to go with the experience.  My only real issue with pop corn is that I don’t love the smell while they are realizing their metamorphosis from corn to puff.  
• Salsa ‘n vegetables:  Don’t dis the crudités.  They may not be manly, but they are a more than suitable substitution for chips and crackers.  And they have, in most cases, no POINTS.  I love dipping, so through some salsa into the mix, and I’m a happy camper

These are good friends, but I have a sneaking feeling that I’m going to need a few more friends if I am to succeed in reforming my snacking/grazing quandary.  Who are you all hanging out with during snack time?

Cheers,

dk