The Rewards of Conversion

No one is more liable to bore you than a convert.  Enlightenment sits uneasily on the throne of his conviction, and his unconscious is troubled with doubt.  Only universal acceptance of his world view can set his mind at ease. Every infidel must be brought into the light, and he may be plotting to begin with you. 

Watch out; my road to Damascus was a corridor in the Boston Medical Center, and I stand before you a man who has been born again.  In the past I scorned nutrition as a bogus science based on inaccurate research and given to frequent change.  Back at Mt. Pleasant School, Miss Sweat the nurse would ask us what we had for breakfast.  “Two fried eggs,” I’d tell her smugly, “two strips of bacon, buttered toast, and milk.”  It might or might not have been the truth, but I knew what she wanted to hear.   Now the nutritionist at cardiac rehab visibly shudders when I mention butter. 

Ah but I don’t have to hark back to my childhood for examples of the wickedness from which I am reformed.  I was the kind of guy you could go out with for a double bacon cheeseburger and a beer.  Now I’m apt to order a green salad with the dressing on the side and maybe a glass of tap water. If you dine with a person who eats like me she’d better look like a supermodel.  I’d be too polite to mention what’s probably happening to your arteries, but you’d suspect my thoughts. 

I admit my meal doesn’t taste vary good, but oh the delicious sensation of virtue!  Goodness is all the more pleasurable when it’s compared with the sins of the unconverted.  If someone’s belly overhangs his belt, the sanctified tend to notice.

Like St. Augustine, I’m a man with a past.  I contemplated a cache of frozen goose fat with the satisfaction of a miser fondling his hoard.  Augustine’s stolen apples were nothing compared with my fried Buffalo wings doused in equal parts Frank’s Hot Sauce and melted butter.  If I were to write my confessions, your mouth would water. 

Unlike the saint, I can boast about my sins and even be glad I didn’t miss out on foie gras. The god of heart attacks cares nothing for repentance. If you’re good, you go into the statistical category where the odds are better.  You can still be a loser; the numbers work for populations not for individuals.  Sinners can win. 

But the smugness of the heart-healthy eater is immediate.  For lunch today, I had spinach ravioli under a salt-free sauce enriched with tofu.  Dessert was fresh raspberries along with chunks of kiwi and apple.  What did you have?