​Do ironic calories count? (alternative title: why do my skinny jeans no longer come past the knees?)

Do you remember a time not so long ago when Hipster cafes offered Kale chips as their most wicked indulgence?

It seems quite recent that the clichéd Hipster would stand in judgement of the equally clichéd working class mum and her supposed supermarket choices of frozen pizza and party pies, tut-tutting the lack of nutritional value not to mention her guilty contribution to the burgeoning obesity crisis.

These Hip Foodies invaded our cafes and served us our green shakes in their mason jars, and delivered our salads on their chopping boards, the dressing overflowing into our mere mortal laps.  Their offerings were all so very tongue in cheek in their presentation and so virtuously healthy in their content. One by one the old die hard stick in the mud café’s that preferred ancient artefacts such as crockery and glassware, seemed to be swept aside by this inexplicable invasion of pointlessly re-purposing  bearded gastronomes.

We obediently ordered our gluten free, sugar free, dairy free  smashed avocado and free range eggs, sometimes pushing the envelope by permitting ourselves a light pinch of Himalayan salt.  Breakfast and or brunch out at weekends became de-rigueur, and why not?  It was all so wholesome.

So what  happened?    How did we go from that extreme to where we are now? 

Yesterday I saw an ad for one of my favourite cafe's (yes, ahem, I do frequent them!) it was advertising a muffin, but of course it was no ordinary muffin oh no!  It was a muffin with blueberries, but not just a muffin with blueberries, it was a muffin made with blueberries and milk chocolate, but of course that’s not all, because it was a muffin with blueberries, milk chocolate and maple syrup…. Do you think we’re done?  Oh no no no we’re not done yet!  Because for some unknown reason it was then decided that the muffin required not one but two mini pikelets stuck to the top!   Why you ask? Don’t ask me I’m still at the tilting my head to one side in bewilderment stage on all this.

My daughter went to a Hipster café in North Melbourne with her dad and got a milk shake, that’s nice right? a little ‘sometimes food’ treat?  Except of course that being 2016, it wasn't just a milk shake, it was a milk shake, with a donut in it, but yes you’ve guessed it that’s not all, as well as a donut it had a Golden Gay Time ice cream stuck in the top, an entire ice cream, and yes there’s more, on top of the ice cream was a piece of chocolate, covered in …… melted chocolate!   A mere 12 months ago a Golden Gaytime Ice Cream would have been considered a treat/desert in its own right, now it’s just one of many  toppings on a desert!

This really needs to be called out for what it is, it’s not trendy and it’s far from whimsically ironic (as the Hipsters like to infer…)  it’s simple gluttony!  By not only normalising but making it appear somehow fashionable they (in my opinion), create a kind of cognitive dissonance in their clientèle who don’t see themselves as being in that lower socio economic bracket where all the studies and stats tell us that obesity resides, due to poor eating choices  made as a result of poor education and the perception that eating a healthy balanced diet is beyond reach financially.

It’s as though the Hipster trend has been a Trojan horse, that has lulled us into believing we’re being gifted with coolness and skinny jean compatible physiques by virtue of association. Our superior healthy, cool,  organic, third world friendly, macro biotic  (whatever that is) Baristas have suddenly turned into  dealers, dealers of what they themselves previously implied was white death – yes,  processed SUGAR! Suddenly those aspirational skinny jeans hanging in our wardrobes are turning into a pipe legged pipe dream.

So in conclusion, YES ironic calories do count!   Enjoying a balanced range of food in moderation is the key to a happier healthier existence. Being presented with a mountain of food is not value, or quirky or even a treat.  It’s a sign that there’s something amiss with our judgement as a society and our ability to appreciate things mindfully at an individual level.  Whether you’re super sizing your fast food meal or eating your mountainous desert off a shovel (or whatever serving implement is considered hipster cool  this week) in one of the trendier cafes in town, you’re not making a good choice!  You leave yourself with two options, you eat it all and use your body as a garbage can for excess or you leave most of it on the plate to end up as food waste (insert mothers voice here "there are people starving in the world!!).  It doesn't make sense does it?

We don’t need to be so extreme, we can stop and think, make better choices more balanced choices, enjoy the occasional treat, and set the trend for the trend setters.