According to common wisdom, I have such a terrible diet, I should be dead. It is not that I hate broccoli; for ten years I was a vegetarian. And I crave vegetables now the way I used to crave chocolate cake.
In restaurants I envy dishes piled high with bright green jungle-like leaves, the crisp cucumber coins, with bright cherry tomato accents, all drizzled with an enticing oily vinaigrette sheen. My burger is…okay. Bland. Boring. I try not to think about how it used to be a live animal.
“It is called gastroparesis,” my GI doctor told me. “I like to call it a lazy belly. The abdominal wall muscles that normally contract to push food down do their job poorly. As a result, the stomach is slow to empty food into the intestines. Paresis literally means paralysis. As a result, you experience terrible pain and sometimes nausea after meals.
“There is no cure, and the medications used to treat it have dangerous side effects, so we rarely use them. In milder cases we treat the condition with diet. You must avoid high fiber foods, especially fruits and vegetables. Your stomach will have trouble digesting them. Meat, bread, rice – those are fine. But you must limit your portions. Eat many small meals if you must.”
I have followed this advice, and the results, in terms of abdominal pain I have suffered the last few years, have been almost miraculous. I can now go out and eat with relative assurance that my restaurant experience will not become a nightmare.
I have achieved this advance in the quality of my life by eating mainly foods that I been taught to avoid. Meat. Carbs. Belly hates cucumbers and zucchini but loves cake, white rice, and animal flesh. My husband has joked that the cuter the animal has been in real life, the more my belly seems to approve of it.
To prevent nutritional deficiencies, I take vitamin supplements. I take my fiber in pill or powder form; for some reason my stomach handles fiber artificially packaged to natural fiber that comes from, say, broccoli stalks.
But I am continually amazed at my diet reversal and how, not only am I still alive; my blood tests indicate that I am healthy. My blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels are all perfectly normal. Because of the need to limit my portions, my weight remains normal as well.
I would be tempted to think that my new diet has not been in effect for long enough to wreck my health, except that I have been mostly avoiding vegetable fiber for years now, simply because I noticed how it affected me.
A few times a week I would make myself eat salads because I did not want to wither away from depriving myself of “real food.” The difference now is that I have been granted official medical permission to avoid the foods that most people consider necessary.
But the whole experience has got me thinking about the ever-changing myths and fads that pervade the nutritional world. I feel like most of what I have been taught about what the body “needs” is a lie.
It seems that, for humans, many diets can work, but a dogmatic tone pervades discussions about how to eat, both in the media and in conversation, yet even the most authoritative nutritional ideal seems to reverse itself every few years or so.
“Stop the insanity” was the dietary catchphrase of the nineties, based on the belief that fat is the most unhealthy thing you can ingest. Was it not obvious that fat, above all else, would make you fat? Was it not insane to think otherwise? Saturated fat became the arch-villain of the dietary world, something that must be avoided at all costs. Artificial alternatives sprung up over night.
Recently, anti-fat thinking has been reversed, and the artificial alternatives are now deemed far worse for the human body than saturated fat, which mostly “passes through you” without being absorbed.
Who are the authorities making these pronouncements only to reverse them a few years later? In college I never thought to question the food “authorities.” I remember looking at the food pyramid released by the FDA, which said fats should be shunned and that grains and vegetables should be consumed above all else.
Even back then, adhering to the diet seemed burdensome; I liked vegetables but the idea of stuffing myself with them in obedience to a chart did not appeal to me. Now, adhering to that diet would not only be unpleasant for me, but nearly impossible and certainly painful.
But if any source of dietary truth could be trusted, The FDA seemed like a good bet. Were the findings not supported by “studies” conducted by reliable scientists who knew what they were doing?
The regularly occurring 180 degree reversals do not inspire trust. Eggs used to be considered “cholesterol bombs” and now they are considered safe. What was poison yesterday is wholesome today, while the former villains of the food world are lifted from infamy and set on pedestals.
Meanwhile, I am consuming a diet reviled by many health experts. I am flouting the common wisdom, and not by choice. Potato chips and burgers make for a happy belly. Beans, bananas, salads, and broccoli seem to turn into shattered glass on their digestive journey.
I would have expected my awful diet to result in a rapid health decline, but my blood tests tell a different story. However, the conditioning of many years has made its mark and I have trouble believing the salubrious results. Surely I will run into trouble at some point; get cancer; become a living wraith; die early.
Health is not a chicken wing, but a picturesque bowl of blue-berries or a head of romaine lettuce. Longevity, the magazines say, arises from antioxidants that come from grapes, strawberries, and leafy green vegetables. And what about Popeye and his spinach?
Dreaming of a spinach salad, I look down at my corn dog and a bed of whisper-thin potato chips. I take a bite of my corn dog and wonder, How am I still alive?