Beware of Eating Out

Last week I spent seven days in Port Townsend, Washington at a graduate school residency. Part of our time as students there includes meals which are served to us cafeteria style three times daily. While the idea of having all of your meals made for you sounds wonderful, in reality it isn’t so great.

The food service was sweet, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Even though I avoided the ice cream and cake desserts, I ate stuff that I’d normally never eat. For instance, the spaghetti sauce was most definitely sweetened. The breaded chicken patty was also no doubt laced with some kind of sweetener. It’s a very subtle thing, but there are sweeteners in nearly everything we eat when we eat food from an industrial kitchen such as the one at my school. Things you wouldn’t normally label “sweet” often contain added sugars. For instance, bacon has sugar in it. Ham is sweetened. Sauces used to season beef contain sugar. Salad dressing is sweetened. Soup is often sweetened. Vegetables come frozen out of a bag and then get covered in sweetened seasoning sauces. Pancakes and French Toast of course have sugar in them. Maple syrup is often just flavored corn syrup. The crust in the quiche contains sugar. And the orange juice at brunch was so sweet I had to dump it out. 

By mid week my energy had tanked and I woke up every morning with crust in my eyes. I’ve been a sugar-addict long enough—and off sugar long enough—to know what it feels like to be experiencing the effects of sugar. Whenever I go to my residency I bring apples to help regulate my diet. I went through over a dozen apples and a jar of unsweetened peanut butter by mid week. Now that I’m home it’s good to be eating foods with familiar ingredients.

Next time you eat out, ask if there is sugar in the foods you are eating. Nine times out of ten your server will have no idea and nine times out of ten your food will contain sweetener in some form or another. Beware of eating out!

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