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January 22, 2006
Fight At Trader Joe's
I headed out to do my shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's before the crowds get heavy. I picked up organic dino kale, organic green kale, organic kiwi, Star Ruby grapefruit (alas, no LBRP grapefruit), and organic cauliflower on sale for $1.99 a head! I headed over to pick up the Lewis Labs Brewers Yeast I had meant to pick up a few days ago.
My heart figuratively stopped as I approached the spot on the shelf where THE ONLY BREWERS YEAST THAT TASTES GOOD is supposed to live. They weren't there. They had only LL Brewers Yeast Flakes.
Hmmm. Flakes. That's not the same thing. I paniced. Was this my divine punishment for going drinking that Skinny Bitch on Friday night? My theology was suffering and my nightly soup was about to get bad. I knew I needed help, support, love to get through this crisis. So I called MR in Canada.
"Are flakes the same as non-flakes?" I asked. He grabbed his container and we compared nutrition info. Same nutrition info. Good. He seemed to think that the stuff we have is rather flaky. I bought the flakes, but had the regular stuff special ordered. Crisis averted.
I bought some delicious olives, all kinds from Greek and Italain to Morocco, and thought happy thoughts about the role that fat now plays in my life. All those lowfat vegan years of avoiding the majestic olive. Thanks be to fat. Unsaturated, that is.
Then onward to Trader Joe's. I grabbed some nice organic brussels sprouts, some nonfat cottage cheese (if I'm dropping my cals, I'm going to go for the 140 cals per cup cottage cheese vs. the 200 cals per cup organic lowfat) and lowfat organic yogurt. Then I stopped over to the customer service desk to inquire about ordering nonfat organic yogurt and cottage cheese, armed with the knowledge that there are other places in the world where Trader Joe's carries these things, thanks to my helpful bloggiefriends!
During my pleasant chat with the customer service rep, I mentioned how much I love Trader Joe's low carb no transfats whole wheat tortillas.
"We might stop carrying those, now that the low carb trend is dying down."
My heart began to race. I felt the rage coming on, the rage I used to feel as a lowfat vegan when people would ask me if I got enough protein.
"But they have half the calories of the regular tortillas," said I.
"But the low carb things aren't good for you," said the customer service dude. "They have ingredients to make them low carb that aren't as good as the other kind."
"But they have no transfats," said I.
"But they have other bad things." He went on in this fashion for a moment, citing no evidence whatsoever but making lots of noises about "bad" and "things."
Oh no dude. Don't go lecturing me about nutrition. I decided to walk away before the conversation devolved into me shouting, "Yeah, okay, well, you're fat." Which would have been true but rather rude of me to point out.
I was sufficiently freaked out at the threat of low carb tortilla extinction that I bought a whole bunch of them to replenish the supply in our freezer. I have eaten quite a few out of our supply, so it made sense to get more, but mostly, I had to hang onto them as a security blanket. I love these critters... at 50 calories, no transfats, low carb, they make a fun treat to be enjoyed with calcium-rich no fat cheese, veggies, Quorn, whatever. They can't go away!!! The kinds at the regular grocery store have transfats, and we're not going to eat that.
I decided to write Jimmy Moore of Livin La Vida Low Carb to suggest that we join forces to save the low carb tortilla from extinction. I really hate it when people smugly suggest that low carb is just a trend, and I know that they look at me as a young, thin woman and think I'm just a stupid girl who's dieting to lose weight and doesn't know anything about nutrition. Lower carb, for me, is a life-saving revolution. Keeping my carbs lower (around 40%) has killed my anxiety, given me the freedom and flexibility to lower my calories, and liberated me from sugar cravings that encouraged me to fill my calories with nutrient-free foods rather than the high nutrient veggies, fruits, lowfat dairy and protein sources that I eat. Low(er) carb rocks!
And while we're on the topic of smug people who assume that I don't know much about nutrition: I may attempt to channel my Orange One next time this happens and argue with these people instead of pleasantly closing the conversation and walking away to buy organic almonds. I was most irked by the condescending tone of this dude as he talked about low carb being unhealthy. Sure, you can do low carb in an unhealthy fashion, but you can do almost anything in an unhealthy fashion! The whole reason why I'm buying low carb tortillas from Trader Joe's is that they have a much healthier ingredient list than any other kind. I strongly suspect that if I had been a man with grey hair, I would not have been met with the condescending tone. And I strongly suspect that if you crunch this dude's diet on my nutritional software, I am eating a whole lot healthier!
I am nice, or at least I like to pretend to be, so I walked away and bought my almonds. I really should make up those little index cards about CR to hand out in these situations. Something along the lines of, "No, I am not a 21 year old anorexic trying to lose more weight, I am a 31 year old professional woman attempting to live longer and healthier by practicing Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition. Here's what it's about..."
When I go out with my best friend and order off the calorie controlled menu or ask questions to determine the exact content of a sauce or a soup, he comments, "They probably think you're a neurotic woman obsessed with losing weight." He doesn't say this to discourage me, but rather to point out how stupid people are. Ever since he started trying to eat a little healthier, he's started asking for vegetables with no butter and such too, and we observe how we get different reactions. A guy with grey hair in a suit asks for a dish of broccoli with no butter, and he's health-conscious, responsible, probably takes good care of his children and pays his mortage on time and trims the hedges weekly in the summer. A younger girl who looks even younger cause she does CR asks for broccoli with no buttter and she's neurotic, uptight, no doubt self-obsessed, not spontaneous, and probably drives her boyfriend crazy by refusing to eat hotdogs at the ballpark when they go to a baseball game.
Again, I review my miraculous good fortune at finding a man to share my life with who is even more exacting about nutrition than I am. And who doesn't care for baseball or force me to endure any form of professional sports. Thanks be to grapefruit!
Chow down Trader Joe's dude. I'll be walking on the beach covered in sunscreen and looking sexy in a string bikini, accompanied by an orange man in a floppy hat, long after ad lib eaters are in the nursing home.
I mean that in a nice way.
Posted by april at January 22, 2006 12:51 PM
Comments
April, I've been reading with great interest your posts concerning brewers' yeast. It's taken me about two years to get over my childhood memories of brewer's yeast force-feedings (figuratelively -- we were bribed and otherwise "incentivized"). Many times my mother would spike our nighttime "kiddo's coffee" (warmed milk and molasses) with it. Yes, I grew up in a health nut's home. After a twenty-year apostasy, though, the prodigal daughter has returned.
But I digress. I note that you use brewer's yeast, the kind that's a byproduct of the beer-making process. I've read that it can be bitter (to this I can personally attest) and contain wild yeast strains from the brewing process that aggravate candida and other yeast-related problems. The alternative seems to be something called "nutritional yeast." This is a primary product, not a by-product, grown on strains of molasses and maple syrup. It absorbs minerals from the molasses or syrup, and the form of these minerals, as a result, is apparently particularly bio-available to humans. It stands to reason the molasses-based yeast is probably more nutritious than that of maple syrup. It's a complete protein with 18 amino acids and 15 minerals with all the B vitamins represented. The nutrional yeast is also not supposed to lead to gas or bloating or aggravate candida, like brewer's yeast can.
At any rate, and most central to my concerns, this nutritional yeast is also supposed to be superior to brewer's yeast in taste. KAL and Lewis Labs make it in powder or flake form. Have you tried it? I have, but cannot compare it to the taste of brewer's yeast, because... well... I just can't hack another molecule of the stuff. I'd be interested in your take on it.
And for the heck of it, I wonder if you might post the ingredient list for those Trader Joe's low-carb tortillas. I'm wondering what the sales guy thought were the "things" that were so "bad."
Posted by: Sam at January 22, 2006 3:32 PM
April,
You're not being nice by not kicking that dude's ass at the store, you're being passive aggressive. If I were you, I would just plain be aggressive and ask him what exactly he's talking about when he's talking about "bad things" in those low-carb tortillas, ask him to take me to his manager, shout at him and write up a complaint.Boy, even I was so intersted in those low-carb tortillas and wished they had them here in Turkey. How can they stop producing them? That's very corp. oriented marketing and very bad especially for a seemingly nutrition conscious company.
I almost grabbed the gun out of the security guard's pants and shot a guy who tried to cut a line in the bank the other day when like 30 people were waiting. No, I didn't kill him (yet), but yelled at him on top of my lungs and put him in the place where he belonged to, that is, the end of the line. That also scared off some mafioso looking guys who stared at me and then left.
You gotta do these things, then they mistake you for a middle-aged grey haired man most of the time, those idiots.
Posted by: zeynep at January 22, 2006 5:21 PM
You know, April, you're starting to grow on me! :) LOL! Keep up the great work and thanks for the link to my blog.
Jimmy Moore, author of "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb"
LivinLaVidaLowCarb.com
livinlowcarbman@charter.net
Posted by: Jimmy Moore at January 23, 2006 12:06 PM
We don't have Trader Joe's in NH. :( How big are these 50 calorie low-carb tortillas? I go for the plain corn tortillas at 60 calories, but they are taco-sized rather than burrito-sized.
Posted by: Erin at January 24, 2006 7:48 AM
What is the difference between brewers yeast and the kind of yeast they sell at a regular market (fleishman's active dry yeast).I'm clueless about yeast distiction and am baking some natural biscuits for my dog. I had to use the regular kind and I hope the biscuits don't explode in my pooches tummy. Any wisdom out there? She has already devoured two and I'm getting a bit nervous...help!
Posted by: nellie at November 11, 2006 5:48 PM