Eating 101

Why is it so hard to feel good about what you eat?

I grew up eating the worst processed food. Fruit loops for breakfast, maybe with a side of grapefruit covered with a half-inch of sugar. Everyday at lunch I’d have a sleeve of saltines and a bowl of Campbell’s vegetable soup. My mother’s suppers consisted of a few staples:

1. Meat gravy - ground beef, onions, and potates simmered together,

2. Spagetti and meat sauce, and

3. Saltine quiche - saltines covered with eggs whipped up with corn kernels, red peppers, and cheddar cheese and baked in the oven.

A side salad was iceberg lettuce with a few shreds of carrot and drizzled with vinegar laced with canola oil.

Sometimes we’d have hotdogs, or tv dinners in aluminum trays, or cheese toast with one of those plastic coated cheese slices layered over white bread, topped with a slice of bacon and broiled until the plastic cheese was blackened and the bacon was crisp.

No wonder I have problems choosing healthy meals, right?

Last week I was on a low-fibre diet in preparation for a colonoscopy. I stared at the list of allowable foods and thought of my childhood. I had to eat white bread and pasta, cooked fruit and vegetables without seeds or skin, dairy, but nothing whole grain or raw. I struggled.

The clear liquid diet the day before the procedure was an even bigger challenge. I couldn’t have anything red, blue, or purple. I was loathe to drink any kind of sugared soda, but I broke down and bought apple juice. I survived on black coffee, green tea, apple juice, and sparkling water and the dreaded Pixo Salax concoction that blazed through me and cleaned everything out in the most extreme and uncomfortable way. Thank God I called and took the clinic’s advice not to teach the morning of the procedure.

It was a long day of waiting to be knocked out for the 15-minute procedure. When I woke up from the anesthetic, I thought I was listening to a podcast, but it was just the doctors and nurse talking behind me. On the screen in front of me was my beautiful colon. It was a slick pink tube lined with colourful ribbons of fuschia and purple blood vessels. Before the procedure, I had been convinced I had diverticulitis, like my mother and had looked it up and seen a colon pierced with tiny holes. That terrified me and I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. However, as I lay in my drug-haze at the tail end of the operation, I marvelled at how healthy my insides looked, even as the doctor searched for polyps and clipped off four of them before my eyes.

Thinking back on that now, I’m still wondering how to preserve the lovely balance of the body amid the confusion of food choices I have to make now. Online, it suggested continuing the low fibre diet for a couple of days, so I have, but I will slowly reintegrate the raw fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and legumes that sustain me. Obvioulsy, eating as I do doesn’t protect me from genetic predispositions, but it must help a little. Or does it?

Medical science helps most of all, I realize, and I’m grateful some people are drawn to it, because I wouldn’t be.

The problem for me is how to avoid being in medical settings in the first place. I try to eat well, but of course, I can’t manage it as well as I’d like to.

Yesterday, in celebration of more flexible eating, I treated myself to curried croquettes from the JnJ bakery. Then I took Isabelle out to our favourite Italian restaurant - Del Piacere.

(Del Piacere is a true gem. The owner, Pietro, fell in love with a Canadian and came to Ottawa from Puglia in 2018 and opened the restaurant on Preston. He makes the best homemade pasta and wood-fired pizza in the city, not to mention cannoli, tiramisu, and gelato. The restaurant is lively and cozy and fun, with big windows looking out onto the strip and booths lining the interior, overlooking the kitchen. In the summer, Pietro opens up the big glass garage door to the patio on Beech Street, plants flowers around the perimeter, and plays Italian folk music. We love it there and celebrate holidays with the kids with dinners there regularly.)

Today, I’m starting with black coffee and peppermint tea. JP is returning from a week in Chicago this afternoon and wants to go out for Mexican, so we’ll head to La Bonita for that. Until then, I’ll be waffling over weather to finish the low-fibre peach crumble that got me through last week, or to stick to healthier choices of a fruit and yogurt, vegetarian omelette, or combo smoothie. Lunches are a challenge too - what kind of bread? What kind of protein? It’s too much. JP wants to continue our vegetarian eating plan, which I love but which leaves me feeling like I never eat enough protein. I get tired of whey protein powder and tofu every day. Another consideration of our eating plan has to be controlling cholesterol. It all feels like to much to decide and I may end up just grazing on whatever is on hand - maybe my neglected oranges, Alpen, and spinach, punctuated by cookies, veggie straws, and cheese?

Why can’t it be easier to eat in a healthy way?

Some of my favourites at Del Piacere.