Acquired Taste

You’ve heard the expression, “It’s an acquired taste,” yet have you ever thought about your own acquired tastes for the wrong foods? Sadly, the overwhelming American diet is the so-called SAD diet - Standard American Diet - consisting of massive amounts of refined flour and sugar, processed food, and frankly, “junk.” It’s unhealthy and the epidemic of obesity and diabetes is blooming out of proportion under our very eyes. In fact, over the past forty to fifty years alone, our rates of obesity have skyrocketed, and with them heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, vascular diseases, and many others.

And the trend does not look like it’s abating.

On the contrary.

More alarming still is how resistant people are to changing their eating habits. Suggest a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and a flurry of objections flares up, such as What about protein, or My husband likes meat, or Milk is good for bones, or My doctor said I should eat a balanced diet, and my nutritionist wrote down that I must eat [blank] pieces of bread every day.

You’ve heard them all before. You may even have used some of these excuses yourself. You may be one of those people who “hates” vegetables, or who thinks French fries is a vegetable. You may be kidding yourself that the sauce on the pizza last night was a vegetable, and did your body good.

No skin off my nose. But the suffering continues. You remain overweight and perhaps sick, loaded with medication by your obliging doctor (hey, he/she went to medical school; therefore, he/she knows, right?).

Look, I get it. It’s easier to stay in place. The status quo is more comfortable. Inertia. You like your sugar in your coffee. Heck, you like your Starbucks in the morning, and ain’t nobody gonna tell ya to stop.

I’m not telling ya to stop.

I’m just suggesting ...

Here goes.

Vegetables are those green and red and purple and orange things that grow out of the ground. They don’t come in boxes. They are perishable. You find them in the periphery of stores. No matter how hard you look, you can’t find an ingredients list on ‘em. You buy them fresh and have to cook them or refrigerate them or eat them right away. That goes for fruit, too. Some of those colorful things are familiar, like lettuce or celery, but some of them are downright strange, like weird types of squashes.

Ah, I can hear objections already: There ain’t no way you’ll get me to eat rabbit food for the rest of my life! or I’ve got no time to cook - I got seven children to take care of! or - and this is a good one - Fruit’s got sugar!!! Hmm. (I love this one!) (You don’t think of sugar when you eat a doughnut, do you? Do you think of sugar when you make mac & cheese?)

Here’s the thing: There is sugar and there is sugar. The sugar in fruit in complex and metabolizes slowly, not affecting blood glucose in the same way as processed food does. The sugar added to processed food has at least 56 different names, almost all chemicals, and raises your blood sugar (glucose) much more rapidly than any natural food you consume. By contrast, a slice of bread, which is made with refined flour and other processed ingredients, metabolizes (turns into) sugar (blood glucose) very rapidly.

Back to those colorful things you find in the periphery of the stores. Begin by buying a few familiar items. Launch into a simple, familiar recipe. Take small steps, such as a sprinkling of salt & pepper, some garlic powder, a drizzle of olive oil and put it under the broiler, then taste. Please don’t object the objections box with But, my nutritionist said to avoid oil!!! Your nutritionist wants you to succeed, and if succeeding means small steps, then so be it!

There is a lovely fable - The Tortoise and the Hare. Guess which one wins in the end?

Dare to surrender!