Purest Green

Friday 11^th January ‘08

Last night I watched the last half of Morgan Spurlock’s ‘Supersize Me’ on channel four. I had seen it twice before, but had reached that stage in the evening when the idea of actually getting up off of the sofa to go to bed just seems like so much effort that you will take any excuse to remain seated for another half hour. I watched as he talked about how, on his McDonalds diet, he felt depressed, ill and lethargic all of the time due to the lack of nutrients he was receiving, the only brief respite being found in the sugar rush of his next hamburger.

It occurred to me that the symptoms he described were pretty much how I feel all of the time. Now, I don’t think that I eat that badly at all. I certainly never eat fast food, unless you count the occasional fish and chips. But I will admit to eating hardly any fresh fruit or vegetables in the average day, let alone the recommended five, or even nine portions. Aside from a Satsuma and fruit smoothie for lunch and the inevitable potatoes with dinner, it’s a wonder I haven’t got scurvy. Much as pictures of shiny, glistening vegetables on television and in recipe books look appetising, I can’t say I really enjoy them in real life. (Although this is probably more due to my usual cooking method of boiling the hell out of anything green, then wandering off and forgetting about it until it is nearly cold, than any real dislike) Anyway, my point is, I refuse to go on living my life feeling the way I do – which is tired and cross most of the time – if it could all be cured by something as simple as a few vegetables. So I am resolved to eat more things that are green.

I also recently watched a Jamie Oliver program on what food does to your insides. I had always considered myself as being quite well informed, if not well behaved, on the issue of nutrition, but one thing Mr Oliver showed really stuck in my mind. He told us that bowl cancer is the second most common cancer in the UK, but up to 80% of the cases of bowl cancer could have been avoided altogether by better diet and exercise. He also said that if you eat only one or two portions of fruit and veg per day (As I usually do) you are asking for trouble.

For Christmas my Mother has bought me a smoothie maker. “This smoothie maker” I said, “will change my life. It will change my life because I have decided that it will.”

Even though I eat little or no fruit, I love smoothies and spend a fortune on them. It’s not that I don’t like fruit – I love it, it’s just that I always seem to forget to eat the damn stuff. The fruit I really like is the exotic stuff which is so expensive, and somehow when faced with an apple or a packet of crisps, I always choose the latter. Smoothies, it seems could be the answer to all my problems. I could pack in four or five portions of fruit a day without even noticing.