Eat Your Greens



That thing about us being what we eat? There's more than a grain of truth to it. Let me illustrate. Before I got over my fear of fresh ingredients, we lived on what can only be described as borderline poisonous stuff. Fat- and salt-loaded convenience foods were the norm. What all these frozen, breaded, salt-encrusted and sugar-coated goods had in common was that they were all predominantly grey in colour. I was grey, too - not to mention being the less than proud owner of the chubbiest cheeks in my locality. I was in my mid-20's, but looked considerably older, due not least to the generously inflated spare tire I was carrying around my waist. I tried to exercise but it wasn't much use, a situation not improved by my vitamin-deficient diet leaving me feeling sluggish, unwell and often more than a bit blue.



All that changed the day when I first understood and accepted this simple fact: vegetables can - and should - taste good. They're nothing to be scared of. In fact, I'm now convinced that painful childhood memories involving vegetables treated as an afterthought that don't deserve the same care and attention as more costly meaty bits are the reason so many people prefer to heat up something containing mysterious animal parts from a package to, say, steaming a bit of broccoli. I'm sure we all have traumatic memories of school dinners consisting of veggies boiled mercilessly until they become just as unappetisingly grey as, say, those infamous turkey twizzlers, or parents forcing us to munch on spinach that's been subjected to some cruel and unusual punishment involving lengthy, texture-erasing immersion in boiling water. It's never too late to embrace green goods: I used to loathe, say, cabbage with a passion, now it in all its many variants (not sprouts, however: my veggie enthusiasm knows some limits) is a regular and welcome guest at our dinner table. Show them a bit of attention, and vegetables can be just as delicious, filling and satisfying as meat and fish, if not more so.

Crucially, they might just make you feel better. Let's rewind back to that cliché which claims that we are what we eat. I used to be grey and flabby, just like the junk I was shovelling down my throat. Having changed my feeding habits and embraced greenery, I am now...well, not exactly green, but definitely fresher and lighter than I ever have been before. Not that the battle with the belly is my primary reason for introducing vegetables to the menu. By embracing the greens, it's quite OK to eat a whole lot more without experiencing all that many negative side effects, an ideal situation for someone as irredeemably greedy as I am.