Food as Medicine

I remember the day when a customer asked for various diet sodas (none stocked) and settled for six chocolate cream-filled berliners. I was an active participant in this vocation.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, treating food as medicine. Of course, all food has medicinal value, but some is bad medicine, the rest are good medicine.

This morning I had a can of garbanzo (chickpeas) mixed with various frozen vegetables, cooked on a natural gas stove. Garbanzo provided the complete protein and fiber, plus other nutritional ingredients. The frozen vegetables this morning were:

• Chopped frozen collard greens,
• Green and red peppers, plus onions,
• Peas,
• Mushrooms, and
• Canned tomato paste for flavor and low calorie nutrition.

There are lots of choices in these categories, such as adding milled flax seed, walnuts or almonds, and side dishes of oranges, apples, prunes, and blue berries.

Everything listed so far has lots of nutritional across a broad spectrum of low-cost food. One should price a quarter-pounder versus the same money spent on frozen vegetables. No one can eat a quarter-pounder worth of frozen chopped collards. That is also equal to four (4) cans of garbanzo beans. The quarter-pounder is mostly fat and salt, with sugar added - because we all love the sugar-fat-grease  foods.

Panera is a fun place for breads and desserts. They go stale quickly so they must be eaten quickly (my excuse). Bread products are close to dessert. A breakfast of toast, butter, and black coffee has very little nutrition but lots of calories from flour and butter, even without jelly. Cinnamon invites sugar, which may already be in the bread and coffee

Several people have been changing more habits than nuns before a Day of Obligation. They feel much better from eating good food, and they lose 15 to 30 pounds without much trouble. These are some habits which are natural for me now:

1. No ice cream or desserts, with very few exceptions. I did not have any ice cream from December until the trip to DC. Someone enticed me to eat ice cream and dessert twice.
2. I weigh myself almost every day. That is encouraging and sometimes a warning. From 224 pounds to 195 is fun, and I enjoyed the cooking practice,
3. Usually, I have much smaller portions of whatever I eat, which comes from eating slowly.
4. I am getting more exercise all the time, which burns the fat. Anyone taking away fat, sugar and white foods (white flour, white rice, white whipped cream) will benefit.
5. I am much more careful about the foods I eat and favor the low cost frozen items over the salty, greasy, and sugared ones.
6. No more take-home colas, yes some McDonalds with Sassy Sue. Infrequent fast-food stops. No hard candy. No donuts. Very little chocolate.