Healthy Eating

I am in the produce section of Whole Giant Harris Weg Safe Joe’s and I am paralyzed. Not that I am incapable of moving; if the store was on fire I’d certainly be able to run away, holding whatever I could save from the cookies section. But I am in the produce area, and apples are not usually cited as inducing paralysis, unless you’re staring at them with the intent on eating something but cannot make a decision. Here I am, ostensibly grocery shopping, but in reality I am having an epic moral conflict, which is something I have every time I go into a food market.

I’m told by anything that emits words that I must “eat healthy” and put more fruits and vegetables in my diet. Here they are, but I can’t bring myself to buy and eat them. Why’s that? Because most of ‘em taste terrible to me, and some of ‘em have a texture I can’t even swallow, like apple skin, which I am convinced is some sort of natural plastic coating. Broccoli, squash, cucumbers, green stuff: it all tastes like DIRT to me, even the frozen ones. People who are privileged to go to farmer’s markets and bring back real life-like vegetables assure me that if I ate enough of these, I’d get used to them. Well, I’ve tried. Over and over and over again. Not only do vegetables taste bitter and dirty to me, they give me a bellyache if I eat more than one or two “servings.” They get me coming and going, if you know what I mean. I don’t even like carrots, and they’re ORANGE!

But the store is full of stuff I love to eat. Tuna fish out of a can. Mayonnaise. Campbell’s Chunky Soup. Frozen meatballs. Cheese of every variety. Triscuits, in multiple flavors! Guacamole and hummus. Chili in a can. Chocolate chip cookies. Great stuff and all of it notorious. It’s too fatty. It’s too sweet. It’s too salty. It’s full of empty carbohydrates. (Who emptied them?) It’s not fresh-made. I have a rule that I follow for “healthy eating.” It goes like this:  “If I love it, it’s bad for me. If I hate it and it tastes like dirt, it’s good for me.” Biological science backs this up. The food-industrial complex wants to sell us on stuff we are evolved to crave, blah blah blah. So not only do these prepared foods taste good, they are part of the Evil Empire of Evolution. 

What to do, Mr. Cabbage, what to do? I know I should eat this or that colorful dirt spawn, but I still haven’t bought anything and it’s getting dark outside. Little old ladies are asking me if I’m OK. I gotta get moving. And, yes, I’m hungry. What goes in the basket? The same old thing. Cheese. Sparkling water. Two reddish apples, in various states of solidity. Hummus. (A chick pea is a vegetable, sort of, right?) A box of Triscuits, the low salt kind that looks and tastes like an outdoor woven chair cushion. Nothing green. At least not tonight.