Glossy wisdom

Maybe you’re as confused as I am on this topic, “The 10 best things you can add to your diet to make your life perfect.” Really? Only 10? In reality there are literally hundreds of lists of the best foods, juices, vitamins, supplements out there. I’m a magazine junkie, I know. LOML and I subscribe to seven magazines. Runner’s World, Bicycling, Utne (rhymes with chutney) Reader, MoJo, Chatelaine, Canadian Living and Ready Made find their way to our coffee table. Don’t get me wrong, I love all magazines and have been known to purchase as many as 10 others off the shelf at the local bookstore, the grocery stores and pharmacy. The themes with almost all of them (MoJo doesn’t seem to have a healthy lifestyle section—which doesn’t surprise me) revolve around the freaking lists of things you have to cook, eat raw, gather or juice, to make your life healthier.

I’ve been on a mission, for just over 16 months, to get fit and lead a healthier lifestyle. I’m ripe for “the lists”. If six hours a week in the gym is good for me, imagine how great I’d be if I added all of those things from those healthy lifestyle “definitive lists”. My day could start with a fish oil capsule, a drop of vitamin D, a B12 tablet, a conjugated linoleic capsule, one Synthroid (I’m hypothyroid), a baby aspirin and one magnesium citrate tablet with the first of eight glasses of warm water with fresh lemon juice. While juicing for the morning snack, I’d scarf back a breakfast of soy beverage (notice I didn’t use the word “milk” here, ‘cuz you and I know it’s impossible to “milk” a soybean) splashed over my two tablespoons of Holy Crap Cereal, followed by a half banana, four dried apricots, 11 almonds, seven blueberries and a six-ounce cup of organic, caffeinefree- herbal-coffee substitute. YUM. Somewhere in the day, I’d have to find time to soak the quinoa and the black beans, plump up the goji berries and steam a pile of kale with a serving of oily fish for my lunch. My point is, when do the list makers stop with the scary litanies? And, who the H E double-downs makes up this stuff? In spite of the high energy avocado, sardine and peanut butter on cracked pine bark, gluten-free flour bread, I’m getting tired of trying to keep up with those well-intentioned lists. I don’t have the budget for 18 separate herbal vitamins and supplements and I don’t have room in my refrigerator for 40, certified organic, super foods. I can’t imagine what they’d look like after two weeks of my forgetting to add the pomegranate seeds, the sweet potatoes, the organic spinach, the tofu (which seems to keep forever, and that makes me wonder about tofu), the low-fat high protein yoghurt, the acai berries, the blueberries, the broccoli and the wild salmon loins (I didn’t know salmon had loins but, I know it now). I’m thinking I’d be the proud owner of a Tupperware jungle of slimy, smelly, cruciferous bits which, in and of itself, would make me stop eating and run for the deep-fried Mars Bars—fried in olive oil, of course.

Most magazines, in the last three or four years have repeatedly featured lists of the supplements and foods you must have in your diet. Occasionally, those magazines (from one year to the next) have featured more than one list in the same issue. As a devotee of magazines, how is it even possible to be anything but confused and apprehensive when I go to the grocery store after a good read? I have to remember the brain health foods, the good-list for women’s health, the bone healthy bests. Every organ, including my skin, has a list of capsules, tablets, vegetables, proteins and grains I “must” incorporate into my diet every single day of my life. My magazine affliction has bombarded me with the wisdom of so-called experts who have the answer to what ails me now and how to prevent what could ail me in the future.

Magazines. Not just fodder but, an amazing source of fibre.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca