So I stopped by Job Number 1 (Pastry Shop) for breakfast this morning only to find out that they were out of my beloved croissants, which happens to be the only meat-free and non sugar loaded food available.
I opted for a breakfast sandwich instead. Then, when I went to get my soda, I really wanted Sprite.
Temptation won -- I decided to put my cup up to the fountain and wait for the clear, lemon-lime, glucose-infused liquid to fill my cup. Finally the intense 30-second wait was over and as I went to sip my drink (complete with bendy straw). Fate intervened -- instead of the sweet carbonated sensation I was anticipating, I was bombarded with plain old carbonated water.
The sprite syrup was out.
I took this as a sign and got the ever-so-mundane diet coke. Which brought me to thinking... how come whenever I go to a restaurant the only diet drinks available to me are water and a diet cola of some sort?
You'd think in this day and age where America has one of the highest obesity rates in the world there'd be more diet options in restaurants.
In fact a simple way of cutting down a lot of the sugar content in any kind of diet is cutting out sugar drinks.
I realize that it's impossible to make the whole world drink diet soda, but to be fair to us diabeticals and health-conscious people out there, don't you think that restaurants should give the people at least one other option when it comes to diet drinks? Would it hurt for the food establishments to add a diet lemon-lime flavored beverage? Diet cola is just so overrated.
On the subject of food establishments -- I would like to thank the many fast food chains that have made their nutritional information much more readily available. Does anyone remember the days when your doctor had to give you that book with all the restaurants with their nutritional information listed?
Well I do, and I remember that we couldn't ever leave home without that book. It was like a sacred item in our home. Without it you couldn't eat out. Sometimes when it came down to choosing between two restaurants the tiebreaker was if one restaurant was in "the book" or not.
Nowadays you can just go to someplace like McDonald's and they have the nutritional information neatly listed on the food wrappers or posted on the wall somewhere; you can even request to see a pamphlet if you'd like. It makes counting carbohydrates or exchanges much easier, especially if you're newly diagnosed and not used to paying attention to the nutritional content of your food.
I guess the important thing to focus on is that there are improvements being made and maybe one day we'll all be able to live in a world where something such as an alternative to diet cola in a restaurant won't be such a stretch of the imagination.
