MANGIA!

Last Tuesday’s blog post started with the food pyramid. Continuing the theme brings me to a short magazine clipping my brother Al suggest that I read. The author speaks of her grandmother, a plump Italian woman who lived to be nearly 100.

The intriguing part, which leaves a lot to be considered, is that she enjoyed her life eating whatever she liked, instead of wasting energy worrying about everything she put into her mouth. The granddaughter who submitted the piece added that her grandmother lived disease-free and peacefully passed away.

The question remains, was she not ill because of her inherited genes, which means it wouldn’t matter what she ate, or was it because she wasn’t worried and enjoyed her food without concern about her image. I can picture how many times the elderly woman uttered, “Mangia!”

Reverting to last week’s blog post reminds me that I considered a “perfect” diet for our firstborn when our pediatrician discouraged keeping him from sweets. When our baby’s doctor queried if the children aren’t going to enjoy things, such as cake, ice cream and soda as a child, when will they have these pleasures in life, with my upbringing to respect authority, I relented. After all, the doctor was a God in my parent’s eyes.

Toddlers these days have water and milk, freshly whipped avocadoes as a first food, moving on to butternut squash and parsnips, rather than jarred baby food with added ingredients. After they get through allergy testing of foods, grandma has some extra treats at her house.

In other instances, where are the doctors to advocate? After a routine colonoscopy, it always baffles me when you’re all nice and “clean,” the hospital or centers I’ve been to offer the least nutritious snacks when I’ve woken from the anesthesia.

As my friend Kevin once said, who wants to eat again after all that pristine cleansing? You feel as though you should only put the healthiest ingredients into your flushed system, but the centers start you out with things that lack nutrition, such as cookies and sweetened juices.

It’s a wonder what Judith’s grandmother would have thought about any of this when she lived healthily to nearly 100 without concerning herself with diet. I would venture to guess she never had a colonoscopy.

Maybe she was a firm believer in, as one doctor suggested to me, you must eat everything in moderation. Her granddaughter paints a different picture of a “plump” grandmother who ate “lots of fat and carbs.” Possibly it was her carefree attitude that gave her the years. Then again, was it her gene pool or luck?