Author Ernestine Ulmer has her priorities straight.

“Can I have dessert, Mom?”  Some parents and health professionals in our thin-obsessed culture would smugly say, “No.”  No to dessert, no to sweets, no to good tasting foods of all kinds because they are “bad for you.”  Thank goodness a small underground group of rebels continue to eat desserts and allow their families to do the same in the name of having a good life filled with small enjoyments that go a long, long way.  Thank goodness rebel restaurants continue to have dessert menus (and some don’t even have the calorie counts on them yet!), and it still isn’t against the law to buy ice cream or pie at the grocery store.  But watch out…if some people have their way, these evil, unhealthy foods will be banned from your life. Now that calorie counting is on many menus, non-veggie or fruit snacks are banned from many school classrooms and non-fat Greek yogurt with fruit is supposed to be your dessert. The tide is certainly turning to make dessert a thing of the past in our culture.

It could become like prohibition was for alcohol.  Just like how gin stills and speakeasies in the 1920’s were still secretly serving spirits despite the ban on alcohol, my ice cream churn and I will illegally be in the basement making a secret dessert parlor to ensure that brave rebels can still have access to a lost pleasure.  Learn the secret knock if you want to come in!

Because guess what?  Eating dessert has not been proven to kill you!  No, it hasn’t.  And it has not been proven to give you cancer or an instant heart attack.  It seems that a life of ongoing physical activity mixed with love, enjoyment, and eating all things in moderation has a place in the hearts of many.  However, many people feel the need to do this in secret for fear of being judged, criticized, and ostracized by the food police in their family or neighborhood.  You never know when someone might weigh you, and identify you as overweight (a criteria that is constantly decreasing, causing more and more of us to become classified as an overweight statistic), and chastise you for the simple act of eating.

Some people feel judged for the type of foods they eat, like desserts or snack foods, some people feed judged for the amounts of foods they eat, and others yet feel judged for just eating anything at all.  Some people eat in secret, others eat only healthy foods in front of others, and “unhealthy” foods in secret, and some eat what they like, but feel guilty and shame, and apologize while having it.

But what does it mean “life is uncertain?”  Is life uncertain?  Can you control every detail of your life and your health and your happiness, or do we all have uncertainty to deal with?  When a dear friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer recently she shared with me what a disillusionment it was.  “I always maintained the weight that was recommended for my height.  I worked out regularly.  I abstained from sugary and fatty foods.  I restricted carbs.  And I’m the one who got the cancer.”  Doesn’t the widespread belief that you can control getting a heart attack or stroke or cancer by what you weigh and what you eat BLAME THE VICTIM?  If you do get cancer or a heart attack or stroke, you are sure to be under the microscope, “Well, what did you eat?  You must need education on how to eat and what to weigh and how to take care of yourself.  You must have done a poor job of taking care of yourself”  Many people try very hard to take care of themselves, and yet THE TRUTH REALLY IS THAT WE DO NOT HAVE AS MUCH CONTROL OVER DETAILS OF OUR HEALTH AS WE WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE.

Really, you can skip dessert for an entire year and just get hit by a bus anyway.  So how about just have some desserts when you want them, and stop thinking you can control your health by what you eat and what you weigh.  Believe me, if you did a direct literature review, such as I did, or such as Paul Campos did in “The Obesity Myth,”  you would find that the correlations between health, eating and weight are really not as clear cut as the health community would like you to believe.

Life is uncertain.  Our wish to control our health by what we eat is tenuous at best.  And not only that, life is to be SAVORED.  ENJOYED.  LIVED.  LOVED.

We are here to love and be loved and enjoy every moment the best that we can.  Spending a lifetime in fear of what can happen to our health, and concerned about every wrong move we might make, and every bite that we put in our mouth, is that really living?

Enjoy! Because life is short and nothing is certain!