All in moderation

Among the top articles under Health News in Google these days are a number about the benefits of eating dark chocolate! Being a dark chocoholic--I find milk chocolate too sweet--this is certainly good news. But at the same time, the topic has become rather tiresome since the fact that eating chocolate can slightly lower blood pressure, reduce the chance of a heart attack, blah blah blah, was after all made known about five years ago. While I do eat a square of dark chocolate once in a while to satisfy my chocolate cravings, I don't intend to increase my daily dosage so to speak. After all, eating too much chocolate means high sugar, fat and calorie intake.

In fact, I am rarely moved to change my eating habits just because so-and-so was suddenly found to significantly reduce the chances of so-and-so disease or health problem. Haven't we always avoided drinking too much wine because of its alcohol content but then hear nowadays that a daily glass of red wine is good for the heart? Then wasn't high consumption of coffee harmful due to its caffeine content? And then, whoa, it's good after all for the liver and the heart! Wouldn't we love to hear that our favorite sinful dessert was actually good for our health? Take for example butter, extra notorious for its high saturated fat and cholesterol content. A few months ago, my aunt who loves butter, can't stand having margarine on her toast and is rather gullible when it comes to news in science and technology proudly announced that she read that butter is actually good for you. Then she happily proceeded to put an alarmingly huge pat of butter on her dinner roll and began extolling the benefits of butter. All of us at the dinner table at the time would have suffered through another monologue had my cousin not immediately shut her up by saying that one simply has to eat anything, whether it's good or bad for your health, in moderation. I couldn't agree more. While a lot of a bad thing is definitely harmful, too much of a good thing can be just as bad or even worse.

So for me, I choose to continue having my usual meals as much as I can under the difficult circumstances--that is, preferably with a good helping of vegetables (can't get along without my veggies!) and fruit juice (softdrinks are a definite no no)--ending occasionally with something sweet like a cookie or a slice of cake (if we have any in the fridge or pantry) or a square of dark chocolate for dessert to satisfy my sweet tooth.