Crystal Flight
Kyle and I recently had the great privilege to go into someone’s home and purge their fridge and pantry of all the crappy fake “diet” and highly processed foods that were keeping them from having the foodlife they wanted. We did this with an audience. We are trying to market a TV show based on the ideas behind this website and this was the topic we chose for our “sizzle reel” episode.
We learned a lot about working in front of cameras that day. We learned a lot about how well our different sets of culinary skills and common passion for living and eating well can benefit lots of people. We also learned that – next time – we’ll take the garbage bags with us when we leave. In all fairness, our “subjects” didn’t retrieve much from the garbage bags. The one thing that Amy, the mother of the family we visited, was ambivalent about giving up was her “Crystal Light.”
Amy and I go to church together. She actually teaches my son’s Sunday School class. I ran into her in the hallway and she confessed to retrieving the Crystal Light. She couldn’t see what is so bad about a drink that contains no calories and gives her flavor.
It sounds benign, doesn’t it? You just need something sweet to take the edge off. The kids like it and they don’t drink water and we want them to stay hydrated, right? You don’t like to drink water so the only way you’ll stay hydrated is to drink this stuff.
My answer to what is so wrong with this stuff is contained in the conversation I had with Amy and her co-teacher, who is another mom, when I went to pick Max up from Sunday School.
I walked into the classroom and was queried by Amy and Laura. “Okay Jill, so if you don’t drink Crystal Light, what do you and your kids drink when you get thirsty?”
“Water.”
“No really… I mean, that’s it? That’s all you drink?”
“Most of the time that is it. Sometimes it’s something more. Water with a citrus wheel or a splash of juice. Maybe unsweetened iced tea that I brewed on my back porch. Milk for dinner. And of course, wine or a cocktail here and there.”
“No, but seriously. What do your kids actually drink?”
“Water.”
“But my kids won’t drink water.”
“They will if there’s no Crystal Light around.”
“But what if it’s hot and they have friends over and you’re serving a snack and a drink? I mean, you want them to have something with flavor, like lemonade.”
“Then make lemonade.”
“Really, lemonade? Make it? Do you make homemade lemonade? Don’t you have to add sugar to that?”
“You do have to add sugar but not that much. We’re used to eating natural foods and are conscious about sugar so we don’t need stuff to be extremely sweet. If the sugar is freaking you out, try a bit of agave nectar. It actually works really well in drinks.”
“Hm. Okay, so how do you make lemonade? Do you just follow the directions on the back of the bottle?”
“What bottle?”
“The lemon juice bottle.”
These women are not stupid. I am not making fun of them. It is the inevitable outcome of habitually drinking highlighter-yellow powdered chemicals with laboratory-engineered flavoring. If you accept that as lemonade, it becomes lemonade to you. Real lemons no longer exist.
And for the record, pink ones never did.
