My Husband Is Banned From Buying “Dessert”

I’d rather gnaw on Johnny Depp’s sweaty durag

There are two types of people in this world: those who think dessert should be delicious, and those who think dessert should be healthy.

My husband falls into the latter category. I love him, but his dessert-buying days are numbered.

Can an entree be healthy and delicious? Sure.

Breakfast? Why not?

But dessert? Whyyyy?

This is the one course of a meal where we can and should suspend all Goop-infused propaganda.

We all know that sugar is our fast pass to an early grave and that high-fructose corn syrup is more dangerous than heroin. We’ve read the same pamphlets and have been schooled by our doctors when they ask us about our eating habits.

You can take away my Penne alla Vodka, but don’t come for my triple chocolate lava cake.

Dessert is the one time when the very rules of nutrition cease to apply, when pleasure transcends the latest diet trends.

And so, my husband is no longer allowed to buy dessert for our family.

My husband buying dessert is like asking Joseph Conrad to tell you a funny story, if he were alive. Or asking your dentist to make you feel good. Some things just don’t make sense in this world.

In his mind, dessert should be healthy and involve “real” foods like fruit or whole grains. They should incorporate no less than 12 of our daily recommended vitamins and minerals. They should be wholesome and nutrient dense.

They should be a dried piece of fruit.

“Why yes I’d love to have a prune for dessert!” said no one ever other than Gwyneth Paltrow.

In my mind, dessert should make you you feel like you’ve been transported to the land of Willy Wonka or an episode of Cake Boss.

Dessert should not make you feel like a preschooler at snack time.

Dessert should be naughty and decadent. It should make you feel like you just robbed a bank or the necklace case at Cartier.

Your first bite should make you smile ear-to-ear.

It should not elicit responses such as “This is better than cardboard!” Or “This reminds me of that time when I got lost while camping and ate tree bark to survive!” Or “I think I’m being punished for something.”

Dessert should be full of refined sugar, chocolate, cookie dough and cream. There should be no shortcuts or substitutions — no alternative dairies or sugars involved.

My husband can continue to buy us dehydrated peas and apples, crushed lentil and flax-seed crackers.

Let him have a field day perusing the various grain-free energy bars and all of the solo ingredient Icelandic yogurt. I hear Greenland makes an even healthier version that doesn’t involve any cows at all.

He can buy the regenerative, grass-fed beef that tastes like the sole of my shoe.

He can buy all the Muesli his heart desires — but he may no longer try and pass it off as dessert. He is hereby banned.

I will be busy scouring the ice cream aisle looking for my usual choco-caramel-cookiedough-brownie-cheesecake-explosion that I will generously scoop into double-chocolate-frosted-cookie-crumble cones.

My children and I will sneer as he chews on dehydrated fig skins.