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Thursday 25 January 2024

Mars bars thickly spread with butter



While exchanging emails with my cousin, we happened to stray into the subject of health and the value of not paying too much attention to official health hectoring. 

My cousin emphasised this point by recalling the eccentric diet of an elderly lady who lived well into a healthy old age before she passed away. An anecdote of course, but as a contrast to official health hectoring, anecdotes can be entertaining.

The old lady with the eccentric diet was aunt of my cousin’s friend. The major features of her daily diet were Heinz Tomato Soup and Mars bars thickly spread with butter. On this delicious diet she is said to have lived to a ripe old age with no particular health problems.

Doesn't appeal to me, but I've never been partial to Heinz Tomato Soup. Yet thanks to the all the health hectoring, healthy people with odd diets are interesting. 

I once knew a chap who ate the same three meals every day with no variation at all. I can't recall what he ate, but mushrooms formed part of his diet together with a daily bread roll he'd baked himself. He baked a batch of seven rolls every Saturday and ate one a day through the week. One Monday he arrived at work moaning about a failed batch of rolls which didn't rise properly. He still ate them though - still one a day until Saturday baking day came round.

5 comments:

DAD said...

In the Summer when the salad stuff is growing in the garden, I will eat a salad every day. Sometimes I will open a tin of Pilchards, or sardines, or salmon and enjoy that with my salad. Chicken is my favorite meat, eaten occasionally.

Winter is different. Plenty of stews cooked in my slow oven.

I'm 87, in full health, physically and mentally. I think that only a limited quantity of food is necessary. A good breakfast; light lunch and a yoghurt in the evening is sufficient. As Tony Handcock said, "People are eating themselves into their grave".

Scrobs. said...

We're doing quite well on a diet of home-made elderberry wine! We've made the stuff since 1976!

It's cheap, pleasant to drink, and with some sort of food around, we have the perfect combination!

A K Haart said...

DAD - we only have light meals these days. Plenty of salads and fruit in summer, more cooked veg in winter. More meat than we used to eat before lockdown for some reason, not sure why.

Scrobs - my parents used to make elderberry wine and I made some during my wine making days. One of the best home made wines as well as cheap.

DAD said...

Have you tried Kiwi wine? It's very light but full of taste.

A K Haart said...

DAD - no I've never tried Kiwi wine, it sounds as if it ought to be good. In my wine making days I tried a number of recipes, some successful and some not. We don't drink anything alcoholic these days though, drifted away from it somehow.