The JOY of internet vegetables.

In which we examine how men and women are differently overwhelmed by the idea of healthy eating.

Like all smart people in today’s booby-trapped world, I try to eat healthy. In fact, I am a vegan, which I will admit is a challenging way to eat. It requires vigilance. It requires research. And it requires looking through a thousand unusual recipes that help a person remain a vegan by offering new angles on how to make vegetables as attractive as possible. But today, as I was scavenging assorted recipe sites for something interesting to prepare for dinner that would hopefully not kill, sicken or demoralize me or my loved ones, I noticed something for the first time. In the photos accompanying the sites I was scouring, men and women seemed to have very different ways of expressing their support and enthusiasm for vegetables. Yes…they are all very happy about the idea of eating healthy. And for that I must applaud them. But are they, perhaps, a little TOO happy? And am I correct in observing that they are differently happy along what appears to be gender lines?

Let’s analyze this photo collection by beginning with a small sampling of the women, all of who are relishing something they can not believe they have been lucky enough to prepare. Did I say relishing? I think I mean reveling in. They are rejoicing.

Just look at the RADIANT smile on this woman’s face as she lifts up a fork full of whatever it is she has prepared for herself. We do not know what that is because we can not see inside her bowl. But one look at her beaming expression and you can not help but realize that she is happier about the meal she made for herself than I have been about anything anywhere, ever. Apparently mere proximity to HEALTHY ingredients has made her glow so incandescently that she did not even want to put the extra unused vegetables back into the refrigerator . As we can see, she had second thoughts about the green and red peppers and the apples. They appear untouched. But process of elimination tells me that she may have eaten a bit of avocado, some lime and a few cherry tomatoes. Not sure about the full glass of orange juice. Perhaps it was left over from breakfast and it was a big enough chore to make that now she dares not throw it away.

This incredibly happy woman has made herself a VERY large bowl of what appears to be uncut mushrooms. Yes, this is a rather unusual choice for a meal. However the photo suggests that whatever it is that she may have prepared may also contain a few peanuts, since there is a large jar of them on the counter behind her. From where I sit, that at least begins to make the ebullience she is experiencing eating them easier to understand.

Then there’s this nearly giddy young woman who is so pleased with herself for her healthy eating habits that, before she begins to eat, she ritualistically surrounds herself with an arc of Brussel sprouts, artistically accented by a light smattering of kiwis. For some reason she has not included either of those ingredients in her meal (as far as I was able to see) That may be because the mere idea of dining near an arc of untouched Brussel sprouts has already filled her heart with so much gaiety that she probably always buys extra Brussel sprouts just for the mood elevation.

This woman is so serenely happy about the whole idea of healthy ingredients that she is using her fork to flick them OUT of her bowl and into the air. That way she can enjoy seeing them one more time before she consumes them. She cares not that she will have to go pick them up and re-wash them, so caught up is she in the bliss that she knows healthy eating will bring her. The meal which is causing her so much rapturous elation appears to be greens, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and either olives or blueberries. This is not a combination that would fill me with this kind of unbridled glee unless I had just been air lifted out of a terrifying war zone and reminded that the very idea of food was a gift. And yes, I suppose it IS possible that she was just airlifted out of a terrifying war zone. There are a lot of them around these days. So if that is the case, I hope her family is well and thriving and has something heartier to eat than sliced cucumber. Then again, it is also possible that she is simply looking thru the very ingredients that she herself cut and placed into the bowl in hopes of finding a few things in there that she actually feels like eating.

Now let us examine how the men in the healthy recipe pages present the idea of healthy eating. Yes, they too are filled with glee. But their photos tell a slightly different tale. They are all about ingredients that still need to be prepared.

This guy, who is already in very good shape, is obviously very VERY pleased with his gigantic bowl of unprepared ingredients. Apparently he went grocery shopping with the idea of eating a healthy meal. But after placing an entire head of uncooked broccoli, a rainbow assortment of differently colored peppers, a tomato and what appears to be a decorative gourd into a large bowl, his expression tells us that he now senses his work here is done. His next move will be to hand the bowl over to someone, anyone, who is near by…confident in the knowledge that they will magically transform his healthful purchases into a delicious meal. Meanwhile, if you need him for anything, he will be at the gym, working out.

Good Lord, this man is happy about his bowl of unprepared ingredients. He knows they are healthy because he has seen them in a slide show of super foods that turned up in the middle of something else he was reading. He is not sure what next step to take to make them live up to the ecstasy he is now feeling, but he definitely wants to maintain this high. So now he is humbly offering them to you, his eating companion, with an overjoyed expression that says “Here. I bought all the colors of peppers , as every man knows he must do. Plus I got two tomatoes, and a small bunch of some kind of micro-greens . And I know that you will make them into something fantastic. I probably don’t need to tell you that these things weren’t cheap. Not at all. But I looked past the expense and did it for YOU because YOU are the one who likes to eat healthy . So now I will leave them here for you to figure out what to do next. Let me know when they are ready. I am starving. Please don’t step on my good mood.”

Wow. This guy is over the moon about his purchase of these ingredients. What is he planning to make out of a leek, a savoy cabbage, an orange and a couple of heads of radicchio? Does he have any idea? Or is he,also, just planning to hand them to whoever is standing in the kitchen and say “Here. You TOLD me to buy something healthy for dinner. These things all looked fresh. I don’t know what they are. You figure it out.”

Here we see a rare moment of honesty in healthy eating. Like so many of the other men in the recipe pages, this young man knew he had to take the all-important first step of buying all the colors of peppers. Then came fitting all the vegetables he just bought, uncut and unprepared, into a big bowl. He didn’t stop to ask why. He just knew it was what had to be done, even though now he finds himself with a bowl containing two peppers, a carrot, a red onion, ( unless its a purple cabbage) and a large head of parsley…and no other plans. To his credit, he does appear to have taken a stab at randomly assembling a few pieces of these ingredients onto a small dinner plate. But unsurprisingly, he does not appear satisfied with the results. He is learning a valuable lesson: that just because you buy a few healthy ingredients, does not mean they will assemble themselves into a dinner . Sad but true.

This man clearly feels the last guy’s pain. His expression tells a slightly different version of the story: he did what was asked of him. He BOUGHT some ingredients. And now that he got them home, he even went so far as to pull a few leaves off what appears to be a Nappa cabbage. But for crying out loud, NOW WHAT IS HE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS STUFF? “WHAT do you even DO with Napa cabbage? What is WRONG with you people? I did what I had to do. I bought an apple, two cucumbers and a chayote. And no, I had no idea what a chayote was. Why should I? Do YOU know what a chayote is? It looked healthy. And that is what really mattered. So I bought it because I sensed you might be impressed that I was saavy enough to buy a chayote. And anyway I was pretty sure that you will figure out what to do with it. “

These two guys, found on separate pages, are both promoting a controversial but apparently very successful health regime. Here they are demonstrating that the best way to stay in incredible shape through healthy eating is to simply apply the healthiest ingredients you can find directly onto your abs.

And finally….LOOK at these guys. Look at each one of them, all found on different pages. These are the THREE HAPPIEST GUYS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Clearly the message these three deliriously happy gentlemen are trying to transmit is that if someone else will just take over the food preparation part, they will be SO delighted to partake of the results that their resulting degree of orgiastic euphoria will make all the effort someone else had to put in to the cooking VERY worth their while. I mean, let’s take a closer look at the way the guy in the bottom photo is SAVORING a fork full of un-dressed lettuce.

Has there ever been anyone more transported by pure ecstasy than this guy? It is my hope for the future that some day, hopefully during my life time, these three men will end up eating lunch together. I truly believe that the level of rapturous exhilaration that will be produced by their combined delirious high spirits will either raise the level of consciousness of the entire planet to an unimaginable high or, conversely, throw the earth off its rotation until we will find ourselves hurtling toward the sun. Either way, it will solve a lot of the problems we are now facing.

I guess the lesson we have learned here is that the most difficult part about eating healthy is learning to handle the BOUNDLESS range of joyful emotions. There are so many big emotions needed to carry on.

Or maybe its just the case that after a life time of guzzling salads, it is finally time for me to hunker down and see if I can learn to actually like lettuce.