Skipping Dessert … and taking the stairs

Five Things Wednesday makes a bold, triumphant return to Skipping Dessert today with five songs about food.  Good food, bad food.  Good habits, less-than-good habits.  Click and enjoy!

I’ve long considered this post. I like food and I like music.  In my mind there must have been millions (foreshadowing) of songs about eating healthy and losing weight.  It’s such a big part of our national conversation (at least it is if you call it “dieting”) that there are more songs out there than I could possibly work into one brief post, right?

Wrong.

There actually aren’t a lot of pop songs directly about food.  Sure, lots of songs that pretend to be about food … but are actually about sex (take, for instance, this one)  But this ain’t a sex blog. That’s what we have the rest of the internets for.  No, on this blog I’m trying to tell a story about food and the struggle to, you know, not die early because of it.  And there’s surprisingly little in the western pop canon to support that.

Regardless, for you, dear reader, I persevered, wracked both my brain and The Google, and now can present …

Five Songs About Food

(Yes, I considered embedding the actual videos, but this isn’t really a picture blog at this point.  Just click ye the links.)

1.)   If I’m going to tell you a story about my relationship with food this is a great place to start.  Kind of a “how I got into this mess” cautionary tale.  I’d be lyin’ if I told you I didn’t enjoy – really, truly enjoy – a whole lot of buffets in my time.  So I won’t tell you that.  Ladies and gentlemen, direct from 1985’s Krush Groove, The Fat Boys and “All You Can Eat.”

2.)  Of course, over the years I’ve tried many times to “amend my carnivorous habits.”  I went through a variety of fad diets and always ended up, like the dude in this song, faced with an overwhelming craving for the food I denied myself.  Which is why they failed.  A classic from Mr. Jimmy Buffett, here’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”  Pass the Heinz 57, if you please …

3.)  It’s true that I simply don’t eat dessert anymore.  I can count the number of sugary treats I’ve had since March of this year on two hands with fingers left over.  I do, however, eat a bunch of fruit.  You know what fruit I like?  Peaches.  “Millions of Peaches“.  Peaches for me.  Enjoy, please, the Presidents of the United States of America …

4.)  Now, eating healthy doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and you can’t enjoy food.  Quality ingredients, cooked by people who care about what they’re cooking, man, that’s hard to beat.  Take, for instance, some good rice, some Gulf shrimp, maybe some andouille sausage, peppers, onions and celery, a good roux, before you know it you got you something gooooood to eat!  A classic among classics, my friends, the one and only Mr. Hank Williams signing “Jambalaya.”

5.)  But you know, every now and then I get this nagging, craving feeling.  I know you think of me as a paragon of healthy eating and a trusted weight-loss advisor, but now and then I have to work hard to put my inner “Junk Food Junkie” back in his box.  Larry Groce tells the story better than I can …

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Thanks, as always, for reading.  Don’t be shy about sharing this blog with your friends.  Oh, and let me know what songs about food you like.  Feel free to post ’em in the comments.