My husband brought some Cadbury chocolate digestives (graham crackery, chocolate-dipped sweet meal biscuits) home from Cost Plus this weekend and I wasn’t going to have one. I’m trying to curb the excess, at least in the run up to the full fledged eatathon that is the holiday season. I’m consciously scaling back a bit, before I strap on the feedbag and get down, in true American fashion.

But then somewhere in the midst of deciding not to, I ate one.

I blame the name. Eating a digestive makes me feel like I’m eating something that will aid in digestion, instead of something that is going to supersize my derriere. It sounds like a mature and reasonable thing to indulge in, in part because it doesn’t feel like an indulgence at all. It feels like a logical necessity. Something as basic as cereal in the morning and a glass of warm milk at night.