The following vignette is intended to be an observation, not a condemnation. I can only hope that those indirectly referenced in it take it that way.

My birthday last month was celebrated by the junior high faculty in the usual way: one of the birthday bakers made a dessert to be served at lunch. While sometimes the baker asks the birthday boy what to make - I know some sort of cake with peanut butter has often been requested in the past - I was not and for good reason.I do not partake in the festivities.Maybe I'm misreading the others, but I don't think they, bakers included, are offended by this. I get the sense that because they see me eat the same thing for lunch every day - one cup of reconstituted soy chunks and 283 grams of Brussels sprouts - they recognize that, as offbeat as that may be, I care deeply about my diet.Normally, a "Happy Birthday Whomever" placard accompanies the dessert, as well as a note card naming the creation if it is out of the ordinary. And this one certainly was.Chocolate lasagna.I have limited knowledge of desserts and assumed the use of lasagna was connected to my commitment to healthy eating. While the treat was still covered, I envisioned sparse chocolate shavings atop two or three layers of a baked mix of low-fat ricotta and low-fat cream cheese blended with a minimum of sugar and a maximum of cocoa powder and followed by lasagna noodles.The composition, though, wasn't even close to that. In fact, it contained absolutely no lasagna.But those eating it certainly seemed to be enjoying it, so I asked how to make it. "It's just like dirt, but layered," someone explained. I knew that dessert was a combination of crushed Oreo cookies and chocolate pudding, so that helped, but there also seemed to be a layer of something white-colored.Later internet research revealed that to be a combination of cream cheese and a whipped topping.The use of Oreos and pudding makes the dessert high in added sugars. And any concoction with cream cheese as a key ingredient is going to be laden with fat and chock-full of calories.Follow the recipe for the reduced-calorie version - repeat, reduced-calorie version - given at SparkRecipes.com, and the entire dessert contains just under 3500 calories, about 900 of which are added sugars and 600 of which are fat. A conservative estimate at how those numbers increase if you do not use reduced-fat Oreos, sugar-free pudding, and a sugar-free, fat-free whipped topping, places the calorie count of a typical serving at around 400, with 75 of those being fat and 105 being sugar.So what's the point of me writing about a high-cal dessert I didn't eat on my birthday? Because the story relates to an AP article I read that same night."Study ties too much bacon, soda, too few nuts to many U.S. deaths" revealed that overeating and undereating 10 key foods directly related to 45 percent of the 700,000 deaths from heart diseases, strokes, and diabetes that occurred in 2012.The research was garnered from data gathered by the U.S. government. The number crunching was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association and showed an excess of overeating processed meats was linked to 8 percent of the deaths from those diseases that year and that the overuse of salt was connected to 10 percent of them.While an accompanying editorial in the journal stressed that the research was not absolute proof that bad diets are deadly, it's still notable that the use of individual foods can be directly correlated to some diseases that lead to death.Which leads us back to the chocolate lasagna.Do I think that any of my dessert-eating coworkers did irreparable damage to their health by indulging in a little - or a lot - of chocolate lasagna?Absolutely not.But regular "celebratory" eating can be damaging.Even though our staff is undermanned, we still acknowledge more than 20 birthdays. Combine those dessert days with the other times someone prepares and shares a dessert, and a teacher at my school probably has the opportunity to eat a decadent treat one out of every four school days.And the calorie totals of a typical decadent treat probably mirror the ones listed for chocolate lasagna.Now if you make adjustments throughout the week to accommodate for those additional calories, you won't gain weight. But you certainly aren't providing your body with efficient fuel, either, and you just might find yourself hungrier than normal after supper.But if you rationalize the additional calories rather than recognize them, the potential for problems escalate. If you tell yourself that bad food's okay for a celebration without making any adjustments to other meals or increasing your amount of exercise, you're figuratively burying your head in the sand.Which increases the odds that an undertaker does a burial of your full body sooner rather than later.