Another Solution

Hi

The single most important thing that I try to do first every day is prepare my 4 or 5 meals for the day. I start with a big breakfast of oatmeal and a ½ of a banana. Then I cut up some fresh cauliflower; broccoli; fresh fruit; and about a fistful size of different chicken &/or turkey salads, and put them all into a Tupperware container (which I re-use), put them in my lunch box with a couple of Evian bottles of half frozen water (a/k/a ice).

I try to be ecological.

I lived in Amherst Massachusetts for 4 years in the early ‘70’s.. I was a “Nader’s Raider” (Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). Bill Cosby was at U Mass at the same time getting his EED, but that’s a story for a different email. I worked at the Amherst food co-op (100 families who bought their fruits and vegetables together each week); the natural food store called the equinox (where I used to make the trail mixes out of nuts and dried fruits); and I learned to recycle: (we used to separate the glass by color- brown glass, green glass, clear glass). Once you become environmentally conscious you tend to stay that way. These days I still recycle, but now I bring my empty bottles and cans to the processing place behind Pathmark, and give it to one of the people that pick up the bottles on the street for a living. It is one of the ways that I like to give charity. Silently and anonymously (until now I guess).

These days I shop at Whole Foods Market. I bring my own whole foods bag each time. My different bags say things on them like “I used to be a plastic water bottle.” At Whole Foods I buy my fresh fruits, vegetables, and salads for my lunch, (and chicken wings for dinner, but that’s another story).

In the movie Harold & Maude, (which I first saw while I was in Amherst) Maude (Ruth Gordon) is a 79 year old woman and Harold, a rich 17 year old kid share an obsession with death and funerals meet and have a little fling (If this sounds a bit strange, it is, but you should really see the movie if you never have). Anyway, at one point Maude turns Harold on to wine explaining that it has no nutritional value, but stating that “….consistency is not a human trait…”

On some days though, I am not in the mood to make oatmeal. Don’t know why, maybe the banana isn’t ripe enough. Or I just want to get out of the house quicker, whatever the reason.

On these days I go to Starbucks and get the Breakfast Spinach roasted tomato feta with egg Wrap (270 calories) and a triple tall 2% cappuccino w ½ a sweet and low, in my own mug (saves a tree); or sometimes I’ll go to Dunkin Donuts and get fluffy egg whites, peppers, onions, mushrooms and melted reduced–fat cheddar cheese served on a delicious multigrain flatbread (less than 300 calories) I don’t like Dunkin Donuts coffee, so I’ll still go to Starbucks and get a cappuccino or finish the coffee I brought from home; and sometimes I have a Myoplex protein shake, which I buy at the health food store, which is what weight lifters use (not that I will ever be confused with a weight lifter) - protein whey that tastes like an Oreo cookie.

The other day while I was at Whole Foods I saw this new product, a small purple plastic bottle, smaller than a tall coffee cup, called Sambazon Acai5- Antioxidant Superfood. I’ve been getting a lot of junk emails about Acai being this new super food, so I figured I’d try it, and I put it into my shopping basket.

The next day, on my way to work, in the car, I looked at the nutritional information and it said that it was 1.3 servings.

This was this little thing. 1.3 servings.

How can it be 1.3 servings?

I am a fairly educated person. I went to school for the first 25 years of my life I have a doctorates degree. I am into weight loss and nutrition. I always read the nutritional information when I buy things. The only explanation I can think of is that I quickly glanced at the calories (110) per serving, and assumed it was one serving.

Assume nothing: He who assumes makes an ass out of u and me.

But I had good cause to assume- I grabbed this tiny little bottle, in a health food supermarket, thinking, (stupid me) that this was one serving.

Okay, so I drank the whole thing. All 1.3 servings. No bells or alarms went off, and I didn’t feel all that guilty because I drank an extra .3 servings. Being in touch with my feelings I realized that I felt more anger than guilt. Why didn’t they just say that it was one serving and it had 143 calories? I probably would have bought it anyway, but then I wouldn’t have had a subject to write about today.

Because then it dawned on me- another solution !!!!!!!!

……………………… to be continued