Friday, April 24, 2009

"Hungry Girl"

(Do not want)
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The Washington Post ran a happy, chirpy story today about Hungry Girl. Who is Hungry Girl, you ask? Her name is Lisa Lillien; she's the doyenne of how to create fabulous low-calorie snacks from corporate food-like substances. I kid you not.

Lisa Lillien has written a "cookbook" about how to blend all this fake food into yummy, diabetes-courting combinations. Sadly, the Hungry Girl has made a small fortune from said cookbook; as of this morning it's #15 on Amazon.

Here's a taste of Lisa Lillien's unfathomable food wisdom, from the Washington Post article: "Lillien knows she has critics out there. "People are hypocrites," she says. "They say 'shop the perimeter of the store, never eat anything that's not organic,' but it's B.S., because people can't live like that forever."

What have we come to? Just four generations ago, 75% of Americans lived on farms. By default, all food was local and organic and seasonal. 80 years ago, only the elite could eat out-of-season food from far away- it was prohibitively expensive for ordinary folks to eat, say, oranges in August. That out-of-season orange was the ultimate display of food elitism. Now, food elitism is eating organic, in-season food, and cooking it yourself. It's come to this: eating real food is elitist. Real food, that we humans have adapted to over millennia. We are not adapted to HFCS and hydrogenation and aspartame and preservatives. We're not even adapted to out-of-season foods; it's one of the many reasons we're fat. Avoiding the "modern" diet is not elitism, it's just evolutionary. It's listening to the wisdom of the seasons and culture and human history.

But she'll soon discover the best low-calorie diet of all; it's called the peak oil diet. It's the diet where you're hungry all the time because the supermarkets are empty and you don't know how to grow your own food, or store it, or cook it. Hungry Girl is sure to love it- she'll be skinny as a rail.

9 comments:

d. moll, l.ac. said...

Ha, ha. The Post Office was having some sort of food drive and had "decorated" with boxes of cereal and such. The Wheaties box claimed to boost your metabolism with it's contents. You'd be better off eating the box (studies show). The only actual food box was a tiny raisin box......I once again was struck with the thought "Wow, people actually eat this crap."

PJ said...

I feel guilty, in a good way, everytime I visit your blog and learn something new about food. I guess I eat a lot of crap, but it's hard to know what is and what isn't. Even Coop food is basically crap if you really look at it. It's just additive free or has whole grains, but it's processed. I think Hungry Girl is very hungry, and not for food.

Melissa ~ Mom to 6 said...

Hungry Girl is strange. What a weird way to make yourself a career. I don't know. I tend to veer towards the outer ring at the market - the FARMER'S MARKET. Oh, and the outer ring in my garden too. Well, actually, I eat things from every row in my garden, but I bet Hungry Girl has never been in a garden. How sad for a Californian to NOT have a garden. Hungry Girl gets my pity.

Carolyn said...

You should do a anti Hungry Girl Cookbook. Show people how to eat REAL food!

Irma said...

It probably IS impossible to eat from only the outside aisles of the grocery store....if all you're willing to do as prep work is open boxas and nuke stuff. If you're not afraid to spend more than 90 seconds preparing a meal, the outside aisles are pretty easy.

The Bunns said...

Holy smoke .. calm down before you blow a gasket. That is just good old American free enterprise at work. Nobody actually DOES what's in those books .. they are all buying them to give to their friend (Heee Heee). Heck, we are convinced that about 9o% of all dishes in any cookbook were never made NOR eaten by the author .. if so, they would not be in there.

Now .. we did used to do a lot of smoke, salt, and pickle ... and that caused a few health problems too. Where I grew up, ALL old farmers were fat!

My motto is "If the slugs won't eat it, neither will I!"

Oh phooey ... I'm on as The Bunns ... well it's not them, I just hijacked their account!!!

Kateri said...

I love your "do not want caption" on the photo. I so feel the same way!=)

Anita said...

I'd never heard of Hungry Girl, but how sad is that??
My family and I were just on a trip, and had to occasionally eat highly processed food, and the one thing we all agreed on was we were so glad to get home to real food again!

This is my first trip to your blog and I absolutely love it!

Kate said...

"Because people can't live like that forever"??? -Spare me.

Throwdown to Hungry Girl: You eat your diet 24/7, and I'll eat my elitist, homegrown, beyond organic, local, seasonal, sustainable, frugal diet 24/7. Let's see who comes closest to living forever.

I'm glad I didn't read that article. It would have disgusted me and pissed me off.