As others will attest, when you sit at a desk all day (possibly bored), you end up snacking. This has a double whammy: because you’re sitting, you don’t get exercise, and because you’re snacking, you get fat.
I’ve struggled to find a sustainable eating regime. I’ve tried a bunch of things. Fruit is a good option when I want something sweet. I usually go through three pieces of fruit during the work day. The savoury snack question, however, has been harder to answer.
For about a week, I happily munched on cashews. Mum had bought raw cashews and roasted and salted them at home. I thought, “This is perfect! Cashews are tasty and nuts are good for you!”
Then, on Friday lunch time while web surfing, I discovered this: energy content of food.
| Cashews
| 11 000 – 12 000 J/g
| (2.5 – 2.9 Cal/g)
|
| Marshmallows
| 4 200 – 5 800 J/g
| (1.0 – 1.4 Cal/g) |
What the — ??!! Cashews have twice the energy content of marshmallows? You mean, I could be stuffing myself with double the weight of marshmallows instead of my ‘healthy’ cashews? And look how light marshmallows are! At this rate, I could be pouring two packets of marshmallows down my throat every day.
I stopped eating cashews straight away.
For those of you who are interested, the way I’ve settled this is by eating five meals a day instead of three. I have First Lunch at around 10:30 AM (basically, whenever I feel hungry), Second Lunch at the normal lunch time and Third Lunch at about 3 PM. I eat quite a bit less and feel full the whole day to the point that I often don’t feel like eating Third Lunch.
If you’re wondering about the title of this post, I was introduced to scroggin at Grade 5 camp. It was delicious (at this camp, I also ate my first taco). I can’t remember the exact trail mix but the folklore says scroggin is made up of:
- Sultanas
- Chocolate
- Raisins
- Orange peels (candied)
- Ginger (crystallised)
- Glucose (generic candy, such as barley sugars)
- Improvisation or imagination (i.e. the chef is supposed to add a favorite ingredient)
- Nuts (any kind, so long as they are not salted)
P.S. Here’s an interesting cultural highlight from Wikipedia — Australian snack food.
P.P.S. Hey! This is even more interesting! Wikipedia describes the origin of the dim sim. It was created by celebrity chef Elizabeth Chong’s father. It was invented! Wow. I had assumed some Australian fish-and-chip shop owner mangled a Chinese yum cha delicacy by deep frying it and mangled its name again by calling it ‘dim sim’!
P.P.P.S. Haha…! Tim Tam Slam. This article is as silly as Iron Chef. I like this line: “The thicker chocolate coating on the Double Coat Tim Tam offers a more stable exoskeleten to help ensure the biscuit does not collapse prematurely.”
