Eating Right

I’ve been eating fruit lately. I should probably clarify that lately means the last four or five days. Basically since we last went to the grocery store. This comes as a worthy piece of news because I’m not exactly the healthiest eater on the planet. They tell you to eat four to five servings of fruits or vegetables per day. I usually eat that many per week. In high school it was per month.

Since college I’ve gotten much better about vegetables. I actually like mushrooms, onions, and green peppers. Match those with the already acceptable potatoes, corn, and lettuce, and you’ve got something. Throw in the ‘acceptable when eaten in something like pasta or salad’ vegetables, including tomatoes, broccoli, carrots and the like, and you could call me a vegetarian.

So vegetables haven’t been a problem. It’s fruit I’m not wild about. And part of the problem is delivery. It’s easy to add vegetables to a dish and you have a guaranteed delivery system. Tacos, baked potatoes, and pasta are all excellent vegetable delivery systems. But fruit has very few ready made delivery systems. Yogurt is probably the most healthy, but everything else seems to veer into the realm of baked goods, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Of course I shouldn’t act like I’m eating all sorts of fruits. I’m mainly an apples and bananas kind of guy. I think those are the great American school lunch fruits. And I suppose if juice counts, I drink a glass of orange juice every day. That counts for something, right?

I’m also trying to be more active. Of course I’m always trying that. But in the past week I have exercised twice, which is two-thirds of what I should be doing. Not that I’ve ever cared much or care now for formal exercising. I’ve always thought it’s pathetic that we reduce ourselves to mice running in a spinning wheel just to stay physically fit. It used to be that our labor kept us in shape. And if it wasn’t our labor, it was our play. Now we don’t do either, so we hit the running wheel. I’m hoping my exercise falls somewhere between the running wheel and play. And the more towards play I can be, the better.

Don’t worry, I’m not turning into a health nut. I just want to be physically fit. When I sprint to catch the bus I don’t want to be catching my breath for the next five minutes. When I join the broomball team every January, I don’t want to spend the first weeks in agony at my lack of activity. When I’m 60 I don’t want to have trouble getting up.

Now if only I could give up my addiction to Pepsi, I’d really be on the road to good health. Wait! No! That’s my caffeine delivery system.

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