After trying different eating habits, all sort of diets and absurd and irrational opinions about health and food always looking for a healthy lifestyle, I eluded the Grim Reaper, with his terrible large scythe, by a hair’s breadth. I didn’t want to be taken so prematurely. I don’t know where to start. I have to carry my post back into my green youth, when I happened to think that all animal proteins were more evil than Satan Himself, casting them out totally from my diet. I decided to go vegan. And I was more vegan than anybody else. When I undertake a project, I usually do it thoroughly. No eyed-creature or would-be eyed-creature passed through my digestive tract. I used to graze happily like cows in the prairie. Come on, fiber! It’s so healthy! I pigheadedly ignored vitamin B12 for years. Despite my pernicious anemia, my thinning hair, blurred vision and dizziness, I was healthier than a horse.
I championed the cause of the most orthodox veganism until the day came when, worn out by the fatigue caused by my anemia and not wanting to croak too early, I relunctantly introduced some eggs in my diet. However, I obstinately went on defending my fodder like Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow.
I didn’t throw in the towel. After some incursions in raw foodism that damaged even more my already ruined stomach, I discovered orthomolecular nutrition. I started stuffing myself with vitamin supplements and stopped eating a lot of food that I used to eat exclusively in the past. Mind is capricious, especially mine, so I fervently defended what I used to attack before. I cut a lot of carbohydrates that I had been eating by the ton until then and I reintroduced animal proteins. Convinced as I was that I had found – at last- the healthiest way of eating, I heralded everywhere with enthusiasm the goodness of a diet that some years ago I would have demonized.
I discovered Georges Ohsawa and went macrobiotic. At that time I studied harder than a bookworm trying to set a Guinness record. I dived into the Yin and Yang universe with a devotion never seen before or since. I rejoiced in my miso soup and my brown rice porridge cooked in a pressure cooker with an umeboshi plum while bothering every living creature to make them throw their olive oil-brushed baguette slices in the trash can. I bordered on cachexia, but I could not care less. But I ate so healthy! All my food organic! Not a single atom of dangerous toxins! Pure manna from Heaven!
Once the macrobiotic adventure was over, I focused my attention on Paleolithic lifestyle, enjoying the delectable idea of eating like those smart cavemen who painted Altamira. And so on and so forth. After all those years my digestive system said one day: “this far and no further” and confronted my (pig) head.
Since then, out of necessity, I eat like a baby: a soft and astringent diet, very light, all food boiled, all food warm, small meals throughout the day. No spicy or fried food. Gluten and dairy free. And lorry-loads of Omeprazole.