Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

It's four o'clock.  I'm hungry, so I stop into 7-11 for a coffee and something healthy to eat and something to answer the cry of my sweet tooth. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, the perfect choice, not the Chocolate Chip Cookies. I'd get my oatmeal (fiber) raisins (fruit) and I'd quell my raging hunger pangs. Of course, you could have hit me over the head that after one package I'd gain a pound. Yes. I can't have just one cookie.

In the past I assumed that certain foods were healthier than others and followed the usual guidelines of natural choices. But I've learned not to eat ANY processed twice made/handled/cooked prepackaged foods. I found when I didn't look at labels and packaging (who does?) I was sucked into NeverNever Land without knowing it. Not only were my choices inevitably wrong, I'd gain weight and it seemed so unfair how a package of cookies at the wrong time of day could put me a pound ahead of where I needed to be. One pound lead to two and on. Clearly, my food decisions were ill-founded.

For instance, oatmeal raisin cookies appear to be healthy, the obvious choice over chocolate chip cookes, right? All that oatmeal? We need bran/fiber to move foods through our small intestines and colon. Well, that depends upon what else is mixed with the bran/oatmeal. And what if you have a gluten or grain allergy? Certainly not a good choice.

Seven Eleven's "Fresh to Go" brand serves up three oatmeal raisin cookies per package and three chocolate chip cookies: take your pick. The oatmeal is on the shelf for those, like me, assuming it's healthier. Wrong. Upon closer observation and counter to applied wisdom, in this instance, the chocolate chips have fewer calories per cookie and fewer carbs, but after eating three of each (one package) you have consumed 420 calories and 69 grams of carbs for the oatmeal raisins. (The chocolate chips offer a minimal difference) So much for a healthy alternative; any fruit would be better.

In addition to the raisins and oats, you eat brown flour, malted barley flour and if you don't have a gluten allergy, that's all the healthiness. The rest is chemicals (concocted vitamins at unlisted amounts-niacin, thiamine, folic acid, mononitrate riboflavin) sugar, partially hydroginated oils, mono and diglycerides, lecithin, whey, salt, benzoate (preservative) artificial flavor and color. Lastly, eggs, butter, baking soda, all processed ( unless the eggs are from cage free, grass-fed chickens and the butter is from grass-fed dairy cows.) Regarding sugar? White refined sugar is a chemical put through a process. Natural brown sugar is better, though if one is diabetic, it's off the charts.

So much for my "healthy" choice in the past. Now the only way I will buy any packaged cookies (be for warned, the boxed processed cookies are worse than these in the clear plastic) is if I am writing about them. The package I used to discuss here is now sitting, in the garbage can. Bon appetite! Goodbye!