An Open Letter to Whole Foods Frozen Pizza

Dear Small Piece of 365 Everyday Value Pizza That I Ate Last Night,

We both knew it was wrong — I, a Type 1 diabetic looking for a mini-dinner after an evening cocktail party spent eating cheese, you, a four-cheese, twelve-inch pizza I’d picked up in the frozen food aisle.  My body can’t process carbohydrates; you contain nearly nothing else. 

It was a match made in hell and — here’s the craziest part — I didn’t even want you. No, Mr. Everyday Value Four Cheese Pizza, we’ve danced this dance before, on an evening of weakness where I, tired of omelettes, submitted to your Parmesan temptations. We both know what happened next — an immediate low, followed by a night of frustrating highs. And the craziest part? You didn’t even taste that good.

 So why did I do it? I blame my husband: he, with the working pancreas, walked into the kitchen after the aforementioned party and slipped you into the toaster oven. I tried to content myself with a snack of four strawberries, but the scent of your melting fat proved impossible to resist. “I’ll only have a quarter,” I demurred. “Maybe a third.” 

A quarter it was — and again, you were not delicious, nothing compared to the Trader Joe’s pizzas that have done me in before. Your crust was too bready; your sauce too sweet. And what of the four cheeses? I could barely discern them, baked, as they were, into a solid salty crust on the top of your mushy, doughy form. 

I went to bed feeling guilty and anxious; a few hours later I awoke to my Dexcom, beeping that I was low. Several tooth-rotting orange tablets and I was asleep once more, only to be roused two hours later by it beeping again, this time saying I was high. How high, you ask? What had you, despite my four-unit bolus, despite a day’s worth of yard work, done to me?

263. For five hours.

You fucking bastard. 

Sincerely, 

Catherine

Catherine Price

Catherine Price (www.catherine-price.com) was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism

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Catherine Price

Catherine Price was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism