It’s been about seven years since my sainted wife and I visited a certified nutritionist. My doctor, the one with a new beach house and mortgage, prescribed it for me; my sainted wife went because she allegedly prepared my meals for me. Pretty sexist, right?
In any case, we diligently went to this three day extravaganza to learn how to eat. It really seems backward because eating is what got me into the nutritionist situation in the first place.
The room was filled with neatly
aligned rows of the most uncomfortable chairs in
Our “teacher” was annoying who ended each sentence with a fake smile while she gently twisted her head.
She had each of us hold up our right hand and then examine it. It seems a though our right hand is smaller than our left hand because our palm was the definitive guide as to how much food we were allowed for each meal.
This lead witch proceeded to explain the types of foods and associated amendments we were allowed to use, and how much.
About this time, another couple in the gallery of about twenty loudly announced they regularly shared food from the same plate thereby reducing their intake. Period.
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| Actual label from a bag of diet ice |
We were only on the salad portion of the meal and still discussing varying lettuce varieties that would provide interesting augmentations to our taste buds. Iceberg is as tasteless as Bibb, Romaine was like Butter Head but more tasteless, Butter Crunch was more fun than Lolla Rossa, but Crimson Butter was supreme. By the way, Michelle Obama’s favorite lettuce is Endive.
All these provide a kaleidoscope of color and a tapestry of textures. Yea! Too bad they only had the flavor of typing paper. Hence the invention of something called salad dressing.
The salad dressing portion was the interesting part – the segment that brought the gallery to blows.
You see, salad dressing is the bane of culinary experts and nutritionists, alike. During the lettuce segment we learned that lettuce has no calories. But neither do carrots, celery, onions, or water. Unfortunately, I enjoy my water with two-fingers of Wild Turkey, and that’s a no-no.
In any case, after more than a sixty-years, I surprisingly learned I was eating my salad all wrong. Rather than introducing salad dressing to the salad, the salad should be introduced to the dressing. Let that sink in for a moment.
According to Brunhilda, the correct way to eat a salad is to lance the lettuce of your choice, then gently dip the tip of the leaf into a small ramekin of dressing. But not any dressing; it should be three drops of extra virgin olive oil and half a teaspoon of low calorie vinegar.
I’m still wagering the idea is to make you so exhausted from stabbing and dipping that you’ll simply pass out during your meal thereby preventing the ingestion of more than 3 calories per sitting.
Speaking of calorie counting, our third day was a choice we were given: either learn about “Nutrition Facts” that appear on virtually every package of edible saleable in our country, or be set afire in front of the class.
Each person was handed a genuine package from real food including crackers, lunchmeat, potato chips, cake mix, popcorn, and candy bars. One person began gnawing on the empty Hostess Twinkie package, sticking her tongue like an anteater inside, in case there was any butter cream frosting left stuck therein.
Then we were all given turns to explain what the different standardized numbers represented, and which were more nutritious than the others.
Evidently this is supposed to be a guide to better eating ONLY if you can discern between food that is good for you or food that has any taste.
The bottom line after three days was simple. Being able to be condensed from three days to roughly nine-minutes – lunch included – the words “If it tastes good, spit it out,” would have helped everyone.
