A Healthy Diet

     Pythagoras, the ancient Greek geometer who is known for a theorem you learned in high school, prohibited his followers from eating beans.  It seems the proofs one needed to explain the sides of a triangle required a lot more thought than pronouncements about diet.   It’s still true.  

     The list of things I’ve been told never to eat includes all fat, anything that contains cholesterol such as eggs and meat, wheat flour because it has gluten, and any vegetable that has been sprayed, chemically fertilized, or genetically altered. Salt and sugar are bad for me, as is diet soda.  As a matter of fact all artificial ingredients are considered potentially toxic.   Tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous, but that was before my time. 

     Some foods were thought to have an almost magical benefit to my health.  In my early childhood it was milk – “nature’s most nearly perfect food."  We’re not talking skim milk either; rich whole milk was the best.  “You never outgrow your need for milk,” I learned when I watched “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”  Later in my life it was thought milk should be avoided, but now it’s back so long as it’s not from cows that have been treated with bovine growth hormones.

     Yogurt became the ultimate health food.  Red meat was also good for you, especially if you were a man who did physical labor or played football.  I remember eating gummy oatmeal in the college cafeteria on the morning of game day, and seeing the football team show up to be fortified by a hearty steak breakfast.  We lesser mortals got to enjoy the smell. 

     Then the superfood became brown rice.  It was part of a macrobiotic diet in which you balanced the yin and yang of your food.  It was claimed this prevented all manner of ills.  Cancer, it was written, was unknown among followers of the regimen.  Remember oat bran?  You could buy it in a jar and sprinkle it on anything you ate.  Dunkin Donuts would sell you a softball-size oat bran muffin.  Now the headliner is kale – preferably organic kale. Drink a kale smoothie, and you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Alcohol, which was once abhorred by folks who considered their bodies to be temples, is now good for you in moderation. 

     Like Pythagoras, the people who give you diet advice get it off the top of their heads.  Sure there are scientific studies, but most of them have small populations or are otherwise flawed.  I believe in eating a wide variety of foods and not too much of any one thing. Do this, come from sturdy ancestors, and be aware of highway speed limits, and you’ll probably be fine.  There are, however, certain forest mushrooms it’s better to avoid.