Both Kim and I have had bariatric surgery. I had a lap-band installed around my upper stomach to restrict my intake of food. It was installed in 2006 and has been operating in that capacity for almost twenty years. Technically, the device was designed to be adjusted regularly with a saline inlet portal, but I quickly determined that fine tuning is not necessary for me and that the absolute restriction did a good job of curtailing my appetite. It worked well enough to allow me to lose 130 pounds, even though I put back on about 30 of that. I managed to keep that 100 pounds off for the fourteen years until I retired out here to this hilltop. Then, when I started working in the garden every day during COVID, I lost that thirty pounds again without any other change to my eating habits. Kim got a lap-band a year or two after me, and lost about 40 pounds, but the mechanism never sat well with her system. Finally, in 2021, she had the lap-band removed and had a full gastric bypass. From that she lost another 40 pounds. Towards the end of these journeys, Kim went on Ozempic and has now switched to Maunjaro and I went on Zepbound five months ago. Neither of us can fully parse how much of the cumulative weight loss for each of us is from the surgeries or the GLP-1’s and I’m not entirely sure it matters since we are both at our all-time low adult weights. Kim is within 10 pounds of her ideal weight level and I am probably 40 pounds or so from that myself.
All of this consumption manipulation has dramatically changed our appetites for different foods. The lap-band and bypass make certain foods simply unworkable for each of us. The GLP-1’s have a very different sort of effect. They certainly generally reduce overall appetite, but how they do it differs quite a bit. For Kim its that general suppression that she feels the most. For me its a bit different. I have no cravings for sweets or for many of the bad foods I used to love like potato chips and all varieties of sandwiches and Fast Food. For me, I still very much look forward to lunch and dinner, and I have an impression of what I would like (and it needs to be savory), but once I start in, the suppressive takes over and I often cannot finish even the modest portions I allow myself.
But some things seem to never change. I’m not sure I can list all the constants of my culinary universe, but one thing that has never changed in the last twenty years through all the surgeries (for me or Kim) and through all the medications (again, for me or for Kim), is that we can eat almost all the popcorn that we want. The lightness of popcorn makes sense, but the volume of the stuff seems somehow contradictory to the gastric restrictions we have imposed upon ourselves. The obvious place where this comes into play is at the movies, but we, like most Americans, go to the movies far less than we used to. I have never been an evening snacker even though most evenings we are engrossed in something on the TV, but that seems to have changed as our eating schedule and volume of eating has changed. When we are at home, we most often eat between 5-6pm (some days even a bit earlier). That means that by 8pm those 500 or so calories are pretty much digested and I get pretty peckish. I have a hard time saying that I’m hungry because I am not convinced I have ever really been hungry per se. To me, wanting to get something to eat is rarely, if ever, driven by a physiological urge that most people would call hunger. The closest I can come to an explanation is that I get bored and feel the need for something that will satisfy the mild sensation of wanting something to distract myself. For me and Kim, the common go-to evening snack of choice is always popcorn.
We actually have a popcorn machine in our kitchen, but recently Kim threw out all the pre-packaged popcorn/oil packets I bought with the unit as they had passed their expirty date. I knew I didn’t like the “dryness” of air-popped microwave, so I went to the store and bought some proper Orville Redenbacher popcorn…only to find out that it was also microwave stuff (but at least a lot better than the old dry stuff I remembered). The one thing I found myself wanting was some sort of flavoring for the popcorn to give it some added interest. The caloric value was low, so I figured I could just find some flavored salts or something. In the process of looking I ran across something called Opopop, which bills itself as a gourmet popcorn company. There literature says they’re on a mission to liberate us all from boring popcorn. they emphasize unexpected flavors, new ways to pop, and a complete reinvention of our favorite snack. You gotta love promotion that says they “make delicious popcorn optimized for eating”. I’m not entirely sure what suboptimal popcorn is like, but if I think about boring airpopped microwave stuff, I’m betting I’m getting close.
Opopop says that its kernels are all flavor-wrapped. They even send you a special popping bowl with your first order. Their view is that perfect flavor deserves the perfect bowl and since every microwave is different and to achieve their popping standards, they had to create one vessel that could handle a range of microwave environments. Their engineers have tested, optimized, and tested some more to create supposedly the perfect popper that delivers the best popping experience possible each and every time. They say that it’s made for eating popcorn by the faceful. If there is such a thing as farm-to-table in popcorn, this stuff is it. They say their commitment starts with their seeds and then extends to the soil and climate where they grow the corn. They claim to be run by a farming family that nurtures perfect popping corn. They say they maintain full and total custody of their product. In terms of flavors, they have Fancy Butter, Super Butter, Salty Caramel, Cinalicious, Pickle Monster, Birthday Cake, and my personal favorite….Maui Heat (spicy with a tang of pineapple). At 140 calories per bowl, its sort of the perfect snack for us. I’m sure we will tire of this like we eventurlaly do with every food product, but for now its our go-to evening weight-conscious snack of choice.