Make sure to buy fresh donuts

I saw on the CBS program Sunday Morning that a man named Robert Ligon sold repackaged normal chocolate donuts as low-fat carob donuts. He bought the donuts for 30 cents a piece and resold them for a $1 a piece.

His workers that he hired to repackage and re-label the donuts turned him in for his fraud. He was doing quite well with his scam, but now he is going to prison for it.

I can see how Ligon could do so well convincing people that regular donuts were low fat. My husband, Tom, loves a donut for breakfast with a cup of coffee and is always asking for donuts if there are none in the house.

His dad also ate a donut for breakfast each morning along with a cup of coffee when he was alive.

Tom used to eat a strict macrobiotic diet 30 years ago when he lived in Boston. The macrobiotic diet is eating mainly grains, beans, seeds, nuts, vegetables, cooked fruit and a small amount of animal food such as eggs or fish. Tom told me that he ate the macrobiotic diet strictly for two years until he was chided one day that he never binged from it. A young couple that also ate the macrobiotic diet told Tom that he was being too rigid and asked him if he would come out for donuts and coffee with them. Tom did and he said the donuts and coffee tasted so good that from then on he stopped for them every day before he went to work.

I tried to eat donuts with him in the morning for a while when we were first married, but I just put on weight, and was hungrier an hour later. When I helped Tom dig graves, he would stop at convenience stores for a snack and he usually bought us each a custard-filled fried donut. One day after I ate one of these killer donuts, the button on my pants popped off. I told Tom I had to eat something more substantial, like protein, for a snack instead of a rich donut.

"What should I have gotten you for a snack?" he asked.

"I could eat some nuts or cheese and crackers. I just can't eat donuts like you," I said.

From then on, I brought my own snack and let him chow down on his killer donut.

Donuts can be addicting.

My brother, Steve, isn't a big sweet eater, but the first time he ate a Krispy Kreme donut, he went back and purchased a dozen and before he knew it he had eaten the whole dozen.

"I never eat donuts like that, but I just couldn't stop eating them. I'm not buying them again in such a big quantity," Steve said. That's proof enough to me that donuts can be addicting.

I have a friend who eats only organic foods and she is extremely careful on what she purchases for snacks. One day when our children were at horse back riding lessons she had just come from a health food store and had a packaged natural whole wheat and honey donut. She was eating it when she stopped and realized that there was mold on the "natural' donut and she had eaten the mold.

"Oh no! What is going to happen to me? I ate a moldy donut. What should I take to counteract eating a moldy donut?" she asked.

"The only remedy I know is to go and buy a sugary, white flour donut and eat it. If you are going to eat a donut, eat a donut, don't eat a health food donut," I said.

She laughed and said I was right. We looked at the package that the donut was wrapped in and saw that the expiration date had already passed. She had fallen for buying a so-called "healthy natural donut."

These are some of my reasons of why Ligon made such a killing on those repackaged donuts he labeled as low fat. But a donut is a donut, no matter what the label. At least the label on my friend's whole wheat and honey donut stated that it was fried in vegetable oil and it wasn't low fat. Seeing her eat that moldy natural donut made me hungry for the real thing.

Heck if you are going to be binging, you might as well go for the real thing.