Reading Murisopsis’ “Looking At Souper Bowl”, I couldn’t help but wonder how I became such a food snob. She posted a recipe for wild rice soup that included the ingredients bacon and Velveeta “cheese”, two items I don’t consider food. Oh, I’ll grant you that bacon is probably in the top three, no make that THE very best of dead animal flesh, but if we are talking nutritional value it sinks like the Titanic to the very bottom of the list. I mean, if you like salt and fat, fried to a crisp perfection, bacon is absolutely the creme de la creme of taste sensations. But nutritionally speaking, your heart actually skips a beat at the thought of turning it into something useful for life. Or perhaps it’s skipping a beat because your brain is anticipating the pure joy of the mastication of it.

The road to good eating habits hasn’t been difficult but it has been a long journey (66 years), and it still includes side roads into temptation. As Oscar Wilde put it, “I can resist everything but temptation.” As a kid, I think my mom despaired of ever getting me to eat anything but potato chips and raisins. She wasn’t an adventurous cook because my dad was, like many men and children, scared to death to try something unrecognizable. When we moved to California from Michigan, he stoutly refused to try any “Mexican garbage”. So, while mom, my sister, and I dove into tacos, tostadas, burritos, and quesadillas, Dad ate hamburgers. To this day, at 95, he still eats, with great gusto and kechup, the comfort food served in the dining room of his senior facility.

And that may be the crux of the whole “healthy diet” argument. For ninety-five years, my dad has eaten salt, fat, and sugar in copious quantities. My mom, at 94, is beset by peripheral neuropathy and memory loss, despite her relatively healthy diet. Granted, Dad has been hospitalized numerous times for various ailments (mostly blood pressure related but including gout) and takes dozens of medications daily, while Mom vegetates in her recliner, taking nothing more potent than a baby aspirin.

So, my question is, how important is good nutrition? I mean, if you are willing to spend a big portion of your discretionary income on pharmaceuticals, and you don’t mind being handicapped by layers of energy-sapping fat, is nutrition even an issue? If the ethical treatment of animals never crosses your mind, and you have the time to linger over a bowel movement, why even include vegetables in your diet?

I’m not going to weigh in on this argument because it’s too late for me to change. My brain is irrevocably wired to prefer a plant-based diet. My self-brainwashing has ruined the pleasures of a perfectly cooked prime rib or a bratwurst on a crisp roll. But you, my friends, still have a choice.