Want to cook more plant-forward meals? We’ll show you how in our 12-week guide. Recipes, techniques and tips on Tuesdays…
— from the Washington Post, August 12, 2021.
The Washington Post wants you to eat more vegetables — great quantities of vegetables, apparently — and to help you do that, they are created a “12-week guide” that will usher you into the mysterious world of plant-based foods.
It’s truly a mysterious world, for me at least, and maybe also for other Daily Post readers who, like me, have been careful to avoid the green-colored Froot Loops for fear they might have some relationship to vegetables.
The 12-week guide is called, “Voraciously: Plant Powered”. You can sign up here.
I was unfamiliar with the use of the term, “voraciously”, in connection with vegetables. In fact, I had to look up the meaning, and it turns out to mean, “Greedy in eating; eating food in large quantities; marked by voracity; ravenous.” And I wonder if that’s even conceivable? A ‘Voracious Vegetarian’?
I mean, I can sit down with a half gallon of ice cream and polish the whole thing off before Half-time. And when I’m in shape, I can finish off a 3/4 pound steak without any trouble at all.
But what, exactly does it mean to be “voracious” with vegetables? Eating a whole head of cabbage? No one could possibly eat a whole head of cabbage, and moreover, no one could want to. I’d sooner eat a whole bowl of green Froot Loops.
It’s not just that I dislike the taste of vegetables. I’m actually afraid of them. I will readily admit it’s an irrational fear. When I was a child, I used to lie awake at night, unable to sleep, believing that there was a bag of Green Giant Mixed Vegetables hiding under my bed. I still get the shivers, walking down the frozen food aisle at City Market.
Perhaps my natural fear of vegetables was heightened, when I was still very young, by the fact that Superman could be killed by kryptonite, which was green.
But now that I’m older and have realized that Superman is just a fictional character, and that the only thing hiding under my bed are some mismatched socks, I have been paying attention to the medical experts who are suggesting that, not only are vegetables harmless, they might actually be good for us.
But should we be “voracious” about this? I mean, we all know that too much of a good thing is not a good thing. Smoking an occasional cigarette, now and then, is relatively harmless, but two packs a day is reportedly very bad.
I have not come across much in the way of scientific studies, looking seriously at the question of “How much broccoli would kill an average adult?”
So I’m trying to be careful.
Luckily, there is one vegetable I’m able to consume in large quantities, without any fear or hesitation whatsoever. Potatoes.
French fries, potato chips, mashed potatoes, potato salad. Once you start eating any of these foods, you can’t stop. And they are not green.
If the Washington Post was thinking specifically about potatoes when they picked the word “Voracious” for their 12-week guide to “plant-forward” dining, then sign me up.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.