In “Super Size Me,”when Morgan Spurlock gets physically sick in his first day of only McD’s, I thought, “One meal? Two meals? And he’s sick already?”
Well, when you clean up your diet and spend months eating healthy, wholesome, non-mutated, non-processed foods — one meal from those pharmaceutical dinner menus will do it.
Frank and I each spend a whole week on the road driving every day to deliver the magazine. Since we’re out and about like that so rarely, we consider it a treat to have easy access to restaurants and shops, etc.
For example, I always do the South Calhoun/Clay/Kanawha/Roane delivery run. One reason is because I know I can get Krispy Kreme doughnuts at The Big Otter Exxon.
We used to eat dinner, lunch, breakfast out all the time. But now, we’re homebodies, and eating out has become…
An Eating Experiment.
See, when we launched the magazine, we also launched our gardens in full force. Vegetables, herbs, winter gardens. We also got chickens, our own eggs – and I began baking bread. Frank and I have eaten healthier in the last two years of our lives than we have in a decade.
But our bodies have developed a low tolerance for processed foods.
If I have caffeine after 11 am, I’ll be up all night. And those Krispy Kreme doughnuts? Man, what a sugar high (and following crash).
But it’s the queasy stomach part that really gets you when you are out on the road.
After two years of this experiment where “diner diarrhea” is the common effect of failure, I have picked up a habit from Hawkeye Pierce on MASH – I smell my food before I eat it.
I have identified a scent that tells me, “Don’t eat that.”
I consider it a survival skill.
We deliver to sixteen counties in Central West Virginia, and I know every restaurant and diner along the way. (I also know all the cleanest bathrooms on every route.) In some, I pick up the scent the minute I walk in the door. In others, it wafts up from the cottage cheese, or the soup.
The sight of an all-the-processed-food-you-can-eat buffet is enough to make my nose and stomach both turn in self-defense.
I don’t want to be this way. Believe me, I come from a long line of buffet grazers. I LIKE crab salad, fried shrimp and instant mashed potatoes smothered in margarine that is only one molecule off from being plastic. I LIKE pre-made pies of pudding on graham cracker crust and nachos smothered in processed cheese.
I just… can’t…. eat it any more.
I also can’t eat much microwaved food.
We haven’t used a microwave in our home for three years. A friend of mine gave me an article on microwaved foods and after that I just couldn’t eat anything I cooked in the thing. We eventually just gave it away. I heat everything on the stove or in the oven now. We dirty a lot more dishes without a microwave, but other than that? We don’t really need it.
I can tell if my bun and burger have been nuked. I can tell by the look if food has been zapped.
I ordered a corn dog once, and they microwaved it. A corn dog. Isn’t there some chef’s rule that says a corn dog is a FRIED food? I mean really, if I’m risking stomach cramps later today with my choice of junk food, shouldn’t it automatically include GREASE?
Some things, like corn dogs and doughnuts, I love so much I don’t care if I’m going to get sick. I’ll risk it all for a bite of Bavarian creme or a taco pizza or salad.
But I can’t if it has that smell. Even still, there are times when I don’t catch it. But after two years on these delivery runs (no pun intended), I pretty much know what/where I can eat.
I also can name the cleanest bathrooms in sixteen counties.
