Alexa notified us we had received a package and then gave us a two-minute lecture on tomatoes. “The tomato is actually a fruit and member of the nightshade family. It’s a good source of vitamin C. If you eat one tomato on your sandwich, you’ll have fulfilled ½ of your vegetable requirements for the day. Would you like me to put tomatoes on your shopping list?”
“NO, Alexa and be quiet!” my husband grumbled. Funny that Alexa picked tomatoes. Hubby used to hate tomatoes. He wouldn’t even eat a sandwich that had once had a tomato on it because of the juice. Slowly over the past several years he’s trained himself to eat them. He occasionally even allows a tomato slice on his sandwich.
The only thing she could have picked that would be worse is avocados. Oh wait, she did once start a lecture on avocados but before she got another word out of her mouth, hubby screamed, “SHUT UP!” He hates avocados worse than tomatoes. The irony is he could have all the avocados he wanted from the tree outside our apartment.
But back to Alexa. If she puts something on my shopping list, where does it go? Do I have to unplug Alexa from the wall and take her with me shopping? Does she have a battery? Is there is an Alexa app for my phone? That’s just what I need. Not only will Alexa politely lecture me on tomatoes while I’m at home, but she could also pop up unrequested on my phone anywhere I go telling me about kale, kohlrabi, and kumquats.
Like my husband, most of us have veggies we don’t like. My friend doesn’t like Brussels Sprouts, a dislike shared by many. So when she lost her sense of taste because of Covid, I teased, “Now’s a good time for you to eat Brussels Sprouts.” Her reply, “I think my brain would still tell me I don’t like Brussels sprouts!!!”
I can’t think of a specific vegetable I don’t like. I’m not fond of potatoes. I don’t like the texture and particularly their lack of flavor. I do, however like the little red bite-sized potatoes drizzled with olive oil and roasted skin-on with rosemary.
My main vegetable dislike is mushy. I’m not fond of anything mushy, except the mushy peas served in my ex-employer’s cafeteria in London. Before you groan thinking they are just sweet peas mashed, they aren’t that at all. They are marrowfat peas (whatever that is) which have been left to dry in the field then soaked and cooked until mushy. Big difference. Many Brits love them. I like them too, which is hard to for me to explain because they are named ‘mushy.’
While my friend won’t eat Brussels Sprouts, her hubby eschews all vegetables except French fries and potato chips. The server at our restaurant frequently chides him about the lack of veggies on his plate. Once, with good intentions, he ordered broccoli. Toward the end of the meal, I looked at his empty plate and congratulated him for eating his broccoli. Turns out he didn’t eat the broccoli. He’d shifted it to his wife’s plate. Reminds me of when we were kids and fed our liver to the cat.
I also dislike people sneaking vegetables in where they don’t belong. I’m sure you’ve seen articles on how to get kids to eat vegetables with recommendations such as grate carrots or zucchini into meat mixtures and make them incognito into sauces. The restaurants at our senior community must have read those articles. They sneak squash into the most unlikely things like chili, quesadillas, and pasta carbonara. Only they don’t sneak it incognito. It’s in visible chunks. Call me crazy, but there’s just something wrong about ½ inch chunks of butternut squash in my chili. Maybe those not so incognito squash chunks is their way of getting us seniors to eat veggies, or squash is really cheap, or they must own a squash farm.
Our non-vegetable-eating friend loves French fries. I guess, technically, French fries are vegetables, but I also guess they are near the bottom of the healthy nutritional value scale. According to the USDA, he could slather his French fries with two tablespoons ketchup to get his veggies. You may remember in the 1980s the USDA’s National Food Service declared that “a condiment such a pickle relish could be considered a vegetable” when trying to maintain nutritious school meals despite drastic school lunch budget cuts. The public outcry was immediate, ‘you’re jeopardizing our kid’s health!’ Even Republican senator John Heinz, of THE HEINZ family, opposed calling ketchup a vegetable. “Ketchup is a condiment… This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of, and I suppose I need not add that I do know something about ketchup and relish.” (1) Yet even today, the USDA considers two tablespoons of tomato concentrate or salsa as a vegetable.
It would be great if we could relax our attention to nutrition in our senior years. We all hear 90 and 100-year-olds give their secret to longevity. Most people don’t say, “I ate my fruits and veggies.” No, they claim eating nine rum-soaked golden raisins a day has helped them live to 100. A 117-year-old celebrated her longevity with foie gras and baked Alaska, plus a few glasses of vino. New York City native Helen "Happy" Reichert, who turned 108 in 2010, said that she hates salads, vegetables and getting up early. Instead, she loves to indulge in rare hamburgers, chocolate, cocktails and enjoying the nightlife. We’d like to be that lucky.
But the medical community warns us otherwise. As much as we think we’ve eaten healthy all our lives and now we’ve earned being able to eat what we please, it seems our need for nutrients increases as we age. We don’t absorb nutrients like we used to. I live in sunny Florida, and take 2000 mg vitamin D, yet I’m frequently vitamin D deficient.
So maybe I should heed Alexa’s advice about eating my fruits and veggies. “Alexa, put tomatoes on my shopping list, please. And while you’re at it, add kumquats.”
References
Claudia Geib, Why Are U.S. Presidents So Obsessed With Ketchup?, The Eater, Jul 22, 2022
Maria Mercedes Lara, The Secrets to Living a Long Life, According to People Over 100, People.com, Feb 24, 2021
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