An Essay on the Website of
the Red Dirt Writers Society

If You Know What's Good For You
by Beth Stephenson (Apr 2010)

 

          I hear the government is trying to punish food sellers for over-salting their foods.  Restaurants may be prohibited from providing salt at the table.  Surely such policies will reduce hypertension, won’t it?

          But what about us hypo-tense folks?  I can barely keep both my blood pressure numbers above 100.  My feet are often cold because my heart doesn’t bother to send blood down there except on special occasions.  I have the metabolism of a snail, but happily, I don’t dissolve into a puddle of foam when I come in contact with salt. A nice, salty handful of cheddar potato chips is actually good for me!

          But cholesterol!  That’s another issue.  My family history suggests that even the skinny ancestors tend (or tended) to high cholesterol.  Perhaps we should be required to show a genetic map concerning family tendencies to high cholesterol before being allowed to buy eggs.  Maybe we should be required to buy olive oil every time we want to buy eggs, (or non-skim milk, or butter, or (gasp!) margarine. Or ICE CREAM!

          My Dad was a fatty.  If only someone would have made him eat raw cabbage every time he bought ice cream. Uncle Sam should insist that with every scoop of Double Fudge Gooey Caramel Delight, Baskin Robbins should be required top it with a scoop of coleslaw.

          Maybe broccoli purchase should be required with peanut purchase.  My Dad would have had mountains of broccoli in the back of his truck.

         Come to think of it, Big Brother, er, Good Ol’ Uncle Sam should require that each slice of pizza have at least a serving of vegetables on it.  Can you imagine the mountains of onions, green peppers and mushrooms that would collect on lunch room tables?

         This brings me to the problem of the home gardener.  Certain types of vegetables are more nutritious than others.  Shouldn’t we have an approved list of acceptable garden produce?  We would be allowed to grow spinach but not lettuce.  Green beans but not snap peas.  Zucchini and radishes would be a faint memory.   Come to think of it, shouldn’t it also be illegal to throw away the Halloween pumpkin?  Shouldn’t all good, honest citizens be required to cook and consume their vegetables, whether they have candle wax in them or not?

                OOOOHHH!  What about chocolate?  What if the health police find out that good chocolate has cocoa butter, cow butter, peanut butter AND sugar?  What if they find out it’s produced by clearing rain forests and harvested by non-union workers?  Oh dear.  O dear, oh dear oh dear.  And to think that it all started with salt.