（日本語は後に続きます）

Klondike bar, Haagen Dazs ice cream, Ghirardelli chocolate, Lindt truffles, and Ritz crackers are part of my daily essentials. These are the food items that provide a lot of calories, even if you only nibble.

I was quite chubby when I was a high school student. I was attending one of the most competitive high schools in my prefecture, and was forced to study several hours a day at home after being at school from 8:00 am to 4:00 p.m. We had classes even on Saturdays, and the summer vacation was cut down only to two weeks or so, because special cramming seminars were held. There were tests all the time, usually three subjects every week so that the students study and memorize important facts…

The biggest difference between the US and Japan regarding what it meant to be a good student was the weight placed on test scores; as long as you scored high in the entrance examination, you got in to a prestigious university. You did not need to be a leader in the club, you did not need to be good at extra-curricular activities; all that counted was the score on the exam. Believe it or not, the teachers often discouraged students from participating in the club activities. (These days it is changing a little bit in Japan,)

In those days, when I came home at about 5:30 pm, I used to eat my snack and often took a nap before dinner, because I never went to bed before 2:00 a.m. I particularly loved Ritz crackers with butter as my snack. Even though I was conscious of my weight and knew what calories meant, I did not think that Ritz cracker were high in calories. It was an innocent looking cracker that was neither sweet nor sugary; the package did not list the calories in those days.

When I was looking for efficient, high calorie food after my esophagectomy, I rediscovered Ritz crackers on the supermarket shelf; 4 crackers=79 calories. When I eat a Klondike bar, it has 250 calories, and everybody knows that it has high calories. When you eat 10 crackers you do no think you ate high calorie food, but you will be consuming almost 200 calories without anything on it. Wow, that is pretty high, and no wonder I was heavy in those days. I was eating at least 10 of them with butter every night!

Probably the Ritz cracker was only a part of the story; the pressure from school, metabolism at that age, irregular life style, lack of exercise, all contributed to my weight then. But I am still amazed that I was literally fattening myself with the cracker when I wanted to be thin like those models on the magazine cover.

Well, the moral of today’s story:

If you want to lose weight, be careful with crackers. It is easy to avoid ice cream because it is very obvious. But crackers have very sneaky ways.