An American Appetite

There were never any clues, and nearly every day the location would change. In search of a little sweet peanut-buttery goodness, I would dedicate hours to finding where my mother had hid the Reeses Cups. Originally, she began with stashing whatever little sugar we kept in the house in remote kitchen locations. But as I became more clever in my methodology, she also became more cunning in her hiding places. For years, this little dance between our wits and cravings continued. Even today, the chocolate is never in an obvious location.

I should probably thank my mother for making it nearly impossible to use chocolate as a crutch while I was growing up. Obviously her aims had my best interests in mind; however, I think her tactics may have backfired a little bit.

It began innocently enough. I was walking through the supermarket and stumbled into the chocolate aisle. Before me was an array of any type of specialty chocolate for which I could ever dream. In awe, I carefully selected one chocolate bar: milk chocolate with hazelnut filling. It seemed right. I am in Switzerland, the land of chocolate, after all. At home, I broke off a piece. Delicious. It took me a few days to finish the chocolate bar, right in time for my next grocery shopping trip. This time, I decided to pick up a few different bars: one with white wine and raisins, one with truffle filling, a orange one, and another hazelnut one. Upon returning home, it occurred to me that I had never seen my housemates enjoying a piece of heavenly Swiss chocolate. In fact, my housemates are incredibly healthy in general, consuming only about half of the amount of food I eat. Immediately, I felt embarrassed by my American appetite, and I decided that clearly I couldn't leave the chocolate in the kitchen for them to stumble upon. So I hid my stash out of view in my room. Two days later all the chocolate was gone.

Most diet gurus recommend that people should hide food from themselves. The theory is that if the food isn't in view, people are less likely to take little nibbles here and there. They've got it all wrong; I am going to give you a better piece of advice: get European housemates, and leave the guilt-inducing food in plain view for all. The theory here is that knowing you will be judged for eating that second piece of chocolate is deterrent enough.