Samuel L. Jackson has a great line at the beginning of “Pulp Fiction,” where he says, “My girlfriend’s a vegetarian, which more or less makes me a vegetarian, but I sure love the taste of a good burger.” My girlfriend isn’t a vegetarian, but she does love to eat right. As a result, I’ve been eating healthful food for longer than I care to remember.
I’m glad about it, though. I feel better when I’m eating sensible portions of nutritious foods. I have much more energy and concentration, which I use to concentrate on how good half a box of Oreos would taste right about now. However, as someone who has used Doritos as a cure for writer’s block my entire adult life, eating right does have some negative impacts on my work.
In all seriousness, though, I’m glad I have my girlfriend by my side to guide me through the wild and woolly world of eating right because I couldn’t do it without her, literally. Who can keep track of what’s supposedly healthy these days? When I was growing up, we were told that bacon would kill us and we should eat more bread than anything else throughout the day. Then I hear that bacon will add years to my life and I shouldn’t eat any bread at all. But that’s just the tip of the food pyramid.
After all the salads I’ve scarfed down, I hear there are certain types of lettuce that don’t have any nutritional value. I didn’t even know there were different types of lettuce. And celery apparently doesn’t do your body any good either. Drink lots of milk, but not when you’re sick. Eat bananas, but not too many. Take a multivitamin, but only every other Wednesday and not the ones with too much vitamin E. Also remember, I before E except after C.
For crying out loud in the cold, wet rain! What’s going on here? I don’t understand how anybody can keep track of what we’re supposed to eat. When my girlfriend and I go shopping, she’s a pro. She adeptly flips over cans and bags to scan the labels and actually understands what she’s reading.
Slowly but surely, I’m learning too. Not because I understand anything about nutrition, but because I’m being conditioned the same way chimps are taught sign language. I’ve learned what types of bread I can put in the cart without getting punished. I think it has something to do with fiber, but I’m not sure.
Here at the University, I’m studying economics and philosophy. Both of these fields basically deal with figuring out that anything anybody tells you is just totally made up. As such, I’m way too cynical to wade through the avalanche of misinformation out there in order to find out how our bodies work and what kind of fuel they really need. I do know, however, that when I eat what my girlfriend tells me to, I have energy and feel good.
Is it emasculating to be so totally reliant on another person for my basic nutritional needs? You better believe it is. Have you ever seen a grown man being coaxed into eating his vegetables through the “here comes the airplane” method? That’s emasculating. Also, every night when I come home I have to check myself for crumbs and brush my teeth, so she doesn’t find out that I eat a monster cookie every day, not every couple of days like I tell her. It’s like having an affair with a baked good (emphasis on the “good”).
Having said that, I recently had an experience where I learned the benefit of a healthy diet. My girlfriend was just minding her business, singing some songs, when a big, burly sailor came by and started charming her. I got upset about this and tried to charm her back. But not only was this fellow much more physically intimidating than I am, he was also much more charming. It looked like my girlfriend was about to run off with this sailor, until he started trying to take advantage of her. I attempted to stop him through use of force, but he beat me up and tied me into a pretzel. Luckily, I was able to suck a can of spinach through my corncob pipe. After that, it was a simple matter to decimate the brute in unarmed combat and sail off into the distance with my girlfriend swooning in my ridiculously enlarged forearms.
Or maybe that was something I saw on TV once. I can’t remember. The point is, nutrition is too damn confusing. So I’m just going to eat what my girlfriend tells me. And if we ever break up, I’ll just end up eating what my other girlfriends Wendy, Shari and Izzy tell me to eat.

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