12/17/06 Nutrisystem

I usually avoid all things diet like the plague, but when Mom ordered a bunch on Nurtisystem food and then decided that she couldn't do it with her schedule, I was like, "Free food? Sure!" I mean, how bad could it be?

(Any of you who have ever tried diet food are smirking right now).

Anyway, it turns out that you have to use a little bit of imagination with this food. Oh sure, the picture on the outside of the box looks great, but in reality most of it is dehydrated and needs water before turning into something resembling food. (Think of those little pills that you drop into the bathtub and they magically expand into dinosaur shaped sponges). The scrambled eggs, for example, are just neon yellow powder in a cup. (I get around this particular lack of appeal by pretending I'm an astronaut, and this is all astronaut food). But just add water and microwave for 45 seconds, and viola! instant scrambled eggs! (Kind of). Of course, they aren't REAL eggs. But they do look a little like eggs, and they smell a little like eggs, so you can probably convince yourself that they taste a little like eggs.

Here's the secret to diet foods. They're specially designed to taste just good enough that you won't toss it out and eat real food instead, but not good enough that you'll be tempted to eat a second helping of it. This is how you lose weight on them. Sure, you could eat the "serving size" granola bar in three bites, but by the second bite, you don't really want to.

All in all, the Nutrisystem food has been a mixed bag. Some of the things aren't half bad. The chocolate cookie bar (which in reality contains no chocolate and no cookies) is good enough that even Tony has had a couple. The roast beef actually tastes like normal food, and is something that I would recommend to other people. Other things, like the banana spice muffins, made sawdust look tasty. (Mostly because sawdust would have been more moist and flavorful). I couldn't choke more than a bite down, and even after I threw it in the trash, I had to move the trash away because the smell was like burning chemicals mixed with a potpourri air freshener.

I certainly wouldn't eat this stuff at every meal like you're supposed to on the actual diet plan, but they're fine for those times that I'm just looking for an instant lunch that will fill me up while I'm on the go. Just have plenty of water ready, Major Tom.