Urgent: Healthier birthday cake?

seeker

Sun, Oct 19 2014, 11:42 pm

So it's annoying when you type a post and then it disappears. What I was trying to say is that I agree that extremes and deprivation are not a good idea. However, I disagree with the presumption that healthy birthday cake is either extreme or depriving anyone. In what way was this "extreme, where even a birthday cake couldn't be a real birthday cake"? My birthday cake was healthier but very real. On the outside it looked totally like any other birthday cake I've made - round, frosted, and decorated with flowers and stuff. Nicer than most birthday cakes I didn't make. On the inside, I got great compliments on the flavor, despite its being made with applesauce instead of oil, whole wheat flour, honey instead of sugar, and lots of little apple bits inside and chopped dates instead of chocolate chips or what-have-you. In contrast, most times I have been to a bakery-cake party most of it gets left behind on plates - people grab big hunks because it looks so droolworthy but then it tastes like foam. And even though you only ate half of it before realizing that, you still get a stomachache because there was THAT much sugar in there. At my party everyone licked their plate clean, almost nobody asked for seconds because it was quite satisfying (and served after a nutritious lunch), and no one had meltdowns or tantrums (granted there were not many children there but one in particular tends to disintegrate after dessert)

freidasima

Mon, Oct 20 2014, 3:18 am

Seeker I'm so happy the cake worked out so well!
Proudmother, maybe what you write works better in the charedi world with so many "no"s over so many things.
In my world, the MO world, there is little problem with hechshers, with tznius, with any of the other things. We live pretty "normally" in EY, not to different than our secular neighbors. We eat rabbanut hechsher, use heter mechira and can basically buy almost anything that is sold in the shelves of any of the major or not so major supermarkets in EY. We dress like everyone else and with today's styles there is no problem of finding a skirt that isn't a miniskirt or finding a skirt at all. Most women I know wear short sleeves during the summer, again not a problem, many wear pants, again not a problem, some cover their hair, others don't but no one seems to agonize over it in my world.
Again, in the society in which I function there are very few absolute "nos" which aren't absolute nos for all of the general society in which we live. Yes, shabbat, kashrut, tahara etc. but for people being brought up with this from childhood (maybe for BTs it is different? I don't know) it is normal, like saying to someone that you aren't allowed to steal. it's just a given.

Hence it isn't something so earthshaking to say "we don't eat X because it isn't healthy". Even your moderation seems to be totally influenced by western media values which have pushed processed foods on us instead of making homemade, because almost all processed foods are the basis for these "unhealthy" things that I am talking about - trans fats (who puts that into something made at home? I have NEVER heard of anyone using whip or margarine etc. other than on Imamother...) or to deliberately put in food coloring in something made at HOME? Never in my life heard of anyone doing that again, except on Imamother.

White sugar is a buggaboo and it has been pushed on us in western society, and only today doctors are coming out in droves and saying it is poison. Just wait, in another 30 years it will be a norm that people who want to keep their health keep away from it. We are just doing it earlier because we are informed.

IF you want to say to your kids that it's ok to have white sugar sometimes or food coloring sometimes or trans fats sometimes, I see no difference in saying "it's ok to have poison sometimes".

The basic difference between us is that I and many like me TRULY believe that trans fats, food coloring and various additives are POISON while you dont. You just think "it's a bit unhealthy". I think it can kill you.