The Broccoli Wars

I’ve got three regulars who want to eat off my usual plate of broccoli and spinach with extra garlic. This doesn’t include the occasional audience to my order that stares the greens down and just has to compliment my choice. The bartender is on to this, so he negotiates with the kitchen to serve me a bigger plate of greens to share. Two of my poachers earn their free veggies by talking to me instead of texting, and one gives me hot tips on software.

It’s nearly impossible to get veggies in a restaurant anymore, anywhere in the country. Why are veggies, fruit, and even flowers shipped here all the way from South America? Is it cheaper? Have we run out?

But wait. We have plenty. At local farmer’s markets last season, I was amazed when vendors told me they packed up all the kids, fruit, veggies, and drove four hours from the California Central Valley every week. Booths loaded with macramé plant hangers had mercifully expired to make room for a street full of food growers and customers hauling it all away.

Why are food growers driving so far? Is it possible they have enough customers to be worth it? A healthy salad in a good restaurant now comes in a midget version disguised as an art form, thoughtfully composed of a dozen green leaves surrounded by six lima beans and a shallot-reduction-basil-fusion-virgin olive oil balsamic-vinaigrette served on a 15-inch dinner plate. And for veggies, now it’s wax beans and potatoes. 
These new developments just take all the fun out of my dining experience. My suspicion is restaurants are fed up throwing away veggies. They cost more to serve too. All that washing and scraping and tossing and choppin’ broccoli takes a bite out of restaurant profits, only to have customers leave it on their plates. The remains are sentenced to the dumpster.

When an upscale restaurant featuring trendy fusion vegetarian cuisine opened, a friend took me there for dinner. I walked in excited. I was prepared to Power Graze. Instead, I got another art piece on an oversized dinner plate. Amazed at the fattened-up tab and still on empty, I raided the fridge when I got home. 
I started walking into restaurants irritable before I even sat down. “Gimme those veggies” I demanded. “I know you’re hiding them back there”, not realizing if I got lucky I would also pay a premium for what lands in the dumpster most of the time.

I decided to alter my strategy. I shopped hard and found a restaurant that served sides of veggies and a personal trainer tending the bar. Surely, I had found one of my tribe. I thought I was winning with my broccoli and spinach order until I got a serving of some kind of genetically engineered species  so bitter I couldn’t eat it called “broccoli rabe”, which is mostly a cellulose stalk with tiny buds at the end.

“They usually mix those with olives, capers, and garlic”, he told me. 
“No kidding” I said, and asked if they had real broccoli with fat sweet verdant heads back there. 
“Yeah, but I have to leave the bar and negotiate with the kitchen. It’s a real pain”. 
I assumed the Irritated Position. “This rabe stuff will turn me into a Cyborg! Who are they saving the Real Broccoli for?” He laughed, made a trip to the kitchen, and I got RB. 
“Don’t expect this every time you come in here. Maybe when it’s slow”.

The next time I walked in, since Dana Carvey eats there too, I started singing his broccoli bit. This was good, the bartender cracked up. I refined my comedy routine some more. I told him I priced out bumper stickers and it wouldn’t cost much to print a pile and hand them out - 
“Free The Vegetables” 
After a few months of being an entertaining customer, I was scoring authentic veggies I could recognize. The kitchen knows me. 
“She’s out there again. Free The Broccoli.”

I walked into the local Vitamin Shoppe today. John is there and he’s very smart about everything in his store. 
“Hey John, have you noticed you can’t even find red colored fruit or blue colored berries in cans to stockpile for the End of the World without all that bad stuff in it for pies?” 
“Yeah, actually I’ve noticed that. We’ve got concentrated blueberry and pomegranate juices, about $15 a bottle. Lots of anti-oxidants and resveratrol.”

“What? That much for juice concentrate? What’s going on?”

“Darn if I know.”

I wanted to finish this blog entry weeks ago, but something stopped me. When this happens, I know there’s more out there worth waiting for. I decided to take a break. A local restaurant makes a salad worth ordering and fills the big plate. I waited until 9 pm to get a seat at the busy bar. On one side, a woman checks out my monster designer salad several times as she tries to finish a slab of meat with mashed potatoes. On the other, a man of “a certain age” is hunched over and stabilizing himself on the counter with both elbows as he finishes his halibut. Left on his plate is a nice pile of organic greens, looking good. He folds his napkin. He’s done.

I can’t watch this. “You’re not eating your veggies?”

“No, I’m full. You want them?” I tell him thanks, but I’ll pass. 
“Take them with you” I suggest. “They will keep you out of the doctor’s office. Works for me.” 
He says nothing. Maybe I need to speak up, so I say it again.

“I heard you. I don’t want them”.

The week after this, I was rewarded with a herd of incoming web posts piled into a couple days. Jamie Oliver decided to take a video cam to the streets like Morgan Spurlock in “Supersize Me”. He targeted Huntington, West Virginia, where half the population is considered obese. The video viralized on the web immediately. I found it on Youtube. Then Jamie was invited to the TED conference. Now his video has taken over Facebook.

I heard Dan Buettner on NPR in my car a day before Jamie, claiming longevity is only 10% genetics. Dang. I was living on empty hope. My grandmother lived to be 104. So now I’m paying attention.

Dan identifies “Blue Zones” as locations where people live longest. In Sardinia, it’s mostly men. Their secret is a plant-based diet and their treatment of older people (who knew?). The special wine Grandmother makes has a positive effect on the grandkids too.

In Okinawa, it’s the women. Again, a plant based diet and undernourishment. They stop eating when full. They’re on the skinny side. They have no word for "retirement".

In the US the Blue Zone Award goes to Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. Their plant-based diet is from the Bible. Their social network is their live community. They do lots of nature walks. They move “naturally”, constantly motivated into daily activity. Their body is always in motion.

All these Blue Zone people have something else in common. They share a common outlook on life. Prayer, veneration of ancestors, a sense of belonging to the right tribe, a faith-based community, and social networks. They surround themselves with the right people to hang out with. Friends are long-term adventures that are “the best thing you can do to add life to your years and years to your life” Dan comments.

My experience starting up and living in what is now labeled “green” communities verifies what Dan says. We were also committed to diversity. Members of vast age differences contributed variant views and skills, were well informed, and sources of boundless information. A passion for expression was considered a gift to the group, not a platform for debate or a smack-down opportunity.

In my view, as well as others like Hans Selye, tolerance for differences removes the acrimony of constant bickering over perceived truths. Medical science has proven this can elevate stress hormones and cause premature aging.

The next day, Extropist Examiner quoted a study walking barefoot activates your soles, sending signals to the brain to grow more neuron connections, which can prevent Alzheimer’s in older adults. Another post on Yahoo claims people who sit all day are prematurely killing themselves. Sitting is apparently leading to an explosion of non-ambulatory status in older adults. I believe it because I have to jump out of the way more often on a public sidewalk to avoid a battery operated wheelchair exceeding the speed limit.

What’s this surge in the news all about? And why is there no backlash over all this claiming discrimination? Could it be the health of Americans, regardless of age, is costing all of us a pile of money? Maybe its time to realize it’s up to each of us, with freedom so far to eat when and what we want, to eat our veggies. I cling to hope that soon I’ll see a picket line in front of a school by trim and athletic looking Mothers Against Disgusting Deprivation of veggies taking it to the next level.

If I sound opinionated, maybe that’s good. Veggies hurt a lot less than the alternative. And people are stealing them off my plate.