Stay Healthy Stay Happy
While the late, lamented Mr. John Lennon warbled about happiness being a warm gun, for the most of the rest of us happiness may be a full tum. Especially as so many of the people who populate planet earth are underfed and undernourished. Here in the West the norm is to be well fed, yet malnourishment can still take it’s toll when we are mightily troubled with obesity and it’s consequent twin evils of diabetes and heart disease. And those twins have innumerable cousins.
It ain’t Ronald’s fault that we are suffering as a nation. The invention of the “Chicken McNugget” did not presage the downfall of Western Civilization. The “Whopper” did not precipitate the destruction of all that was good and holy in the glorious days of yesteryear. What Southern sharecropper or wandering Okie would not have given his or her false teeth for a burger, fries and shake to distribute to an ill-nourished child who might have done better if a glass of milk an’ cornbread, an’ poke salet had been on hand.
We have grown fat upon the land because we have become wealthy without wisdom. Humble gratitude for what we are blessed with is better than rapacious greed to gain more. Making relevant choices as adults and parents is essential to our own health and that of future generations. Government mandates will not produce happy or healthy people. Being free to make a choice between fatty, artery clogging food and well balanced nourishment is our right. Choosing the right is a more difficult path. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. Then we will make the best choices for ourselves and the children we raise. Out of love and respect for ourselves and others we will choose the good from the bad. I can still remember when I first started in earnest to grow my own food. After hauling in rich composted material to my allotment one bag at a time, after I collected it where the county workers had for some years been dumping leaves cleared off the roads, I grew the tastiest vegetables. Cabbages, Brussel sprouts, carrots, potatoes, fennel, parsnips all had exquisite nuances of flavor. I had reduced my intake of meat and eschewed salt and pepper, and was rewarded with a thousand-fold increase in enjoyment of nature’s bounty.
Instead of our public schools churning out (or leaking out through dropping out) hordes of minds ill and under nourished and thus unable to make wise choices, teachers need to take the initiative to throw out the books about global warming, having two mummies, and Che Guevara’s sainthood. Then they can concentrate on telling it like it really is; like it really, really is. And then those kids can turn out to be better prepared than their own parents were in nurturing the best in the human spirit. Teach them that chicken soup is good for the soul. Nanny states never nourish or nurture. Never forget the Soviet bakers’ shops with the interminable lines of people with gaunt faces; harassed and haggard people without hope waiting in vain as the last lousy loaf was sold.
