A Science Experiment (Or, Why I'm Never Eating Promise Again)

Every Friday this winter, I've hosted a Coffee Social at work.  Residents come down, pay a buck for coffee and a pastry, and get to do something besides stare at their own walls.  To change it up today, I offered bagels.

Bagels for a crowd is tough if you're using a toaster oven.  Or worse, a toaster.  So I got the idea of toasting them in the oven.  What do you suppose people did before there were toasters, besides eat the bagels soft??  I spread each one with butter and put it in the community room's oven and checked on it after about four minutes.  They all looked golden brown and delicious.  Only I ran out of butter.  And I didn't know if they would toast well with nothing on them.

A woman who lives on the first floor said that she had some, only it was Promise.  In the thick of it, I said sure.  I had several more bagels to toast and didn't want to disappoint anyone.

Here is where the science experiment comes in:  the bagels that were toasted with butter were crisper, and the butter "sank" into the bagel.  The bagels that were toasted with Promise....weren't.  They developed these oil slicks on top and the spread never soaked into the bagel.  I was unfortunate to get a bagel half dressed in Promise, and I can still taste the plastic-y aftertaste two hours later.

The weird thing for me is that I used to buy "buttery spreads" for years, and only in the last five or so have I switched to real butter.  When I was eating stuff like Promise on a regular basis, I didn't notice.  At the time I was also putting Splenda in my coffee and was no stranger to diet soda.  Actually, I am a former Diet Coke addict.  I drank it non-stop for about a year in college.  It was the first thing I bought every morning and I set a can down on my nightstand every night.  I probably drank a 12-pack of diet coke a day, the more that I had the more I wanted.  And I felt like crap.  Quitting was tough, too, the withdrawal headaches were insane!!

So, as far as I'm concerned, these fake butters are never coming in the house again.  I gave up on the Splenda some time ago.  It's best to go with the real things.  I'm not going to go crazy with the "this is real and I'm not eating this anymore" and cut all processed foods out of mine and my family's lives or anything.  I don't have time to make everything from scratch and neither does my husband.  But this is a change that I don't think we'll regret anytime soon.