Oops! I didn’t mean to sound accusatory! Really, my comments were directed at the people described by the OP (those who deride the triple-cheeseburger/Diet Coke combo), not you; your post was just the best lead-in to what I wanted to say.
Not everyone drinking a diet with a fattening meal is a diabetic.
Not every diabetic is fat.
A diabetic person may be getting the McSpecial and diet may be bordering on low sugar, or have budgeted the sugar allowance to permit an indulgence.
One of the things taught in Diabetic School 101 is that the freer the carb, the worse the implication for your blood sugar. Pop and fruit juice are the worst, because the sugar response is near-instantaneous. Refined flour and solid sugars found in baked goods are a little better, but not much. Complex carbs, like 100% whole wheat, and fibrous vegetables are the best, because the sugars enter the blood stream the slowest. Fats have little implication regarding blood sugar, but need to be limited for overall weight control.
Oops! I didn’t think you were being accusatory, in fact, the first thing I did was “What did I say in my post?” - as in, how could I have expressed myself better? No worries - but I get it now! :smack: (That’s to myself, not to you!)
Ava
This is exactly the thing, really. Drinking your calories is almost always a bad idea so if want something sweet to drink but don’t want the 300 calories a can of coke gives you, Diet Coke is a sensible choice, even if you’re eating a ‘large’ amount of food. The amount of weight you can lose by switching to diet drinks and making no other changes is surprising (although I drink a lot of pop, so the change was more drastic).
. . . and you call it “pop”! 
So do I! Where are you from, and do other people make fun of you for saying “pop”?
Er, 'scuse the hijack . . .
It;s not uncommon terminology in parts of Canada. In my youth my family used to go to “The Pop Shop” where they had a truly ridiculous variety of flavoured sodas in a rainbow of colours.
Hmmm. I grew up in Kansas. No “Pop Shops”, but plenty of Pop . . . Can’t tell you the shit I got for saying “pop” when I moved away from here . . .
Unbelievably rude people notwithstanding (like Biggirl’s White Castle example), I think that a lot of times, when people criticize the “diet Coke with a huge meal” thing, they’re talking about people who mistakenly think they’re going to lose weight by doing nothing other than switching to diet Coke. And let’s be honest - there are people out there who believe (perhaps it’s wishful thinking) that a quick fix like that is going to work. I once saw an overweight woman eat one of those pre-made salads that come with a rather large packet of dressing. Well she squeezed not one, but TWO entire packets of dressing on that salad, and most likely sucked down about 80 grams of fat, no doubt all the while thinking how “good” she was being by getting a salad. Sometimes it’s just sad to see people deluding themselves. But I agree with the OP in that its wrong to say anything, because when we do, we’re making assumptions. Who knows? Maybe that woman just really likes salad, and was under no misconception about it.
Huh.
Not to hijack my own thread, but could you give cite on this? I ask because I’ve found that, indeed, when I (accidentally) drink fruit juice or soda, I get a -much- worse reaction than say, bread, which never really seems to do much to me. Any info you have on this would be of interrest to me.
Why? Do a person’s food and beverage choices have to “match up” or something? Do you also cringe if you hear someone order a salad with light dressing on the side and a regular Coke? What if they want red wine with their fish? What sort of drink should they order if they order not a “diet” meal nor a fatty one, but something in between? I’m overweight, and the other day I ordered a pasta dish with a cream sauce and a large glass of ice water, because (as I believe I’ve mentioned) I like water. Would that offend you as well? Would it make you happy if I ordered a double root beer float as my beverage instead?
I mean, kudos to you for not mentioning it to customers, but your expression may have given you away, and it’s not really your business what anyone else orders to eat and drink. You’re not 15 anymore. I used to think the same way – I went to school with a girl who had a Snickers bar and diet Coke for lunch every day – but I came to realize that “diet soda” does not automatically equal “pretending to be on a diet.”
Sheesh, Scarlet. I said it struck me as odd, not that I’m putting on my jackboots right now to go enforce my dietary views on the world. Odd, like ‘that goes against my taste’, like I think it’s odd that some people must actually be watching the non-Dave-Chappelle-version of Trading Spouses.
I don’t get (again, it’s just not me) the logic behind Food Item A - 600 calories, 25 grams of fat + Food Item B - 500 calories, 15 grams of fat + Diet Coke - 0 calories. It just seemed out-of-place in the sequence.
IMO (see that, Scarlet?), if you’re going to have a bacon cheeseburger, you’re already being gluttonous (which is great sometimes) so have what you want. If you want the Diet Coke, great - I’m just saying that I don’t understand the combination - I cannot tolerate diet anything.
And what’s wrong with red wine and fish? I’m allergic to fish/ seafood, so when my stepdad and I went to Paris, I was eating a lot of beef. He ate some sort of fish/ seafood almost every night - so we compromised with a light red - a Cotes du Rhone, for example. Hell, there are meat dishes (like veal) that are best paired with a strong white.
I don’t know where my materials are anymore, but if you Google ‘glycemic index’, you’ll get a wealth of info.
Diabetic School 101 was many many moons ago for me.
Rats, and here I thought I was hip bashing smokers… 
When I worked for the evil coffee empire (AKA “Starbucks”), we had a lot of regular customers who ordered their drinks made with nonfat milk, but still wished their drink to be topped with whipped cream.
For those of you who don’t know, Starbucks whipped cream is pure whipping cream sweetened with seven pumps of vanilla-flavored Fontana (sugar) syrup. Fat and calories galore (but oh-so-yummy, especially with caramel sauce).
Now, as I’ve said, these were “regular” customers. I was on a first name basis with each of them, knew what they did for a living, where they lived, the names and schools of their kids, how granny was doing after her surgery, and what happened with that “personal” problem. So I knew that each of these customers was on a diet of some form or another, and accordingly ordered their drinks nonfat to be more healthful.
Never mind explaining to them that insisting on the whipped cream on their drinks wasn’t doing a whole lot to be more healthy (nor that while the low-fat orange cranberry muffin was indeed technically low fat in that less than 30% of the calories came from fat, the damn thing still tipped the scales at over 400 calories - but that’s another rant). Forget the argument the Weight Watchers Points ™ system ranking did not include whip on that tall nonfat latte. THEY WANTED THEIR WHIPPED CREAM, and still persisted with the view that they were being healthy and doing something good for themselves by ordering their drinks nonfat but keeping the whip.
So in the end, we all felt very justiifed when we did this: Any customer who ordered a nonfat drink with whip in my store had a special name given to their style of drink - it became a “Why Bother.” Venti nonfat with whip mocha? A venti mocha “Why Bother.” Tall nonfat with whip toffe nut latte? Tall toffee nut “Why Bother,” with extra topping please! Our regulars found this hilarious and took delight in ordering their drinks with the special name.
Now, those Atkins dieters who ordered their venti lattes made with breve? Don’t get me started! And lastly, while I was able to convert a few conscious peeps to soy, there was inevitably the few wayward souls who ordered their soy drinks WITH WHIP. Milkfat melting into soymilk? All together now…
EEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!! :smack:
I don’t mean to pick on you, but this is exactly the attitude that the OP is talking about: you don’t know what the woman was thinking. She may well just really like the taste of a salad with heavy dressing more than the taste of a cheeseburger, and have been completely aware that it was no healthier. It’s presumptous to assume what her motives are, and sort of condecending to assume that she must be working from good motives but be too stupid to understand the ramifications that you see oh-so-clearly. Now, if it was someone lecturing you on healthy eating while ladeling on the dressing, then bitch away. But assuming that that is what they would “no doubt” say if you asked them is just unfounded.
You must have missed the part where I said “kudos to you for not mentioning it to customers.”
Ah. So what drink IS mathematically correct, then?
So if YOU can’t tolerate it, then don’t YOU order it. Several people in here have said that they cannot tolerate sugared drinks, so they order diet soda with their “gluttonous” meal. Still doesn’t give you a reason to consider them weird, privately or not. What do you care what someone else eats? There’s no “logic” involved – people order things they can consume that taste good to them. (And calories are – surprise! – not always the prime deciding factor.) Go over to the “Unusual Snacks” thread – you’ll probably have a stroke.
I realize that you’re not going around in jackboots enforcing your preferences on others. I’m asking you to reconsider your stance that certain food/drink combinations “don’t make sense” or whatever. Guess what? Everyone else is not exactly the same as you, and we’re all going to like different things. You order what you want, I’ll order what I want, everybody’s happy. See how simple that is?
I’m sorry, but it’s driving me nuts: it’s aspartame. A-S-P-A-R-T-A-M-E. Your “s” is totally in the wrong place. [/pedantic spelling nazi]
Yamirskoonir: I like the taste of whipped cream AND I prefer skim milk to whole milk. So what? People have strange tastes, always will.
Although, you do raise a good point about the nutrition information not including whipped cream. We need to have very clear labels on everything… Ruby Tuesday is doing a great job, who knew that 8 oz. of steak had fewer calories than a steamed vegetable platter? :eek: The Atkins diet a is low-calorie diet after all, the dieters just don’t know it.
Yes I did, since you immediately followed it with:
One, lay off the condescending bitchiness. It’s misplaced. I can’t stand the taste of aspertame, I don’t order it. And I eat “gluttonous” meals myself, so don’t try and make it look like I’m being righteous. I didn’t say I considered them weird, I consider the combination, the choice weird. Sheesh.
Of course there’s no logic involved - it all depends on personal taste. I used to eat butter when I was kid, for gawd’s sake. I eat ‘weird’, unhealthy, gluttonous stuff - and it’s completely your right to think it’s weird/ strange/ not tasty.
Let’s try this again - I don’t have the right to be rude to someone’s face - but it’s ridiculous to think that I can’t find a food unappetizing.
dre2xl: Did you miss the part where I said this particular set of regular customers each told me they were on a diet, and thought they were being healthy and remaining within the constraints of their low-cal, low-fat diets by ordering nonfat but keeping the whipped cream?
Sure, perhaps that daily 400 calorie latte and 500 calorie muffin fit within their 1,200 calorie/day diet. But it’s not practical - I have a hard time imagining that they managed to stay within 300 calories for the rest of the day, every day, expecting to feel satiated and still lose weight.
I’m not trying to pick an argument here. But I went out of my way in my post to make it abundantly clear that these folks in this particular instance were just deluding themselves. I was talking about a specific set of people I knew personally, and was not trying to make a representation of coffee drinkers as a whole. I understand (and agree) that it is possible for other folks to prefer the taste of nonfat with whip to whole or percent with whip. I’m one of them.
It remains MHO, however, that soy milk should never be mixed with whipped cream. Sacrilege! /shudders involuntarily