Veg Out

From the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” department:

This week I read an article online entitled “Trick yourself into eating veggies.” Apparently, vegetables are so onerous that, in order to get them past your lips, you have to visualize a big, juicy steak.  Now, be honest, when you hear the words “eat your vegetables,” doesn’t it remind you of other phrases your mother may have uttered when you were young? “Eat your vegetables” has a hallowed place in the pantheon of great sayings such as “clean your room” and “do your homework.”

But why is that? Why do vegetables have such a bad rap? If you read my previous post, “The Three Little Pigs,” you know that that a food must contain fat, sugar or salt to be considered a “good” food. Vegetables are sorely lacking in those qualities, offering only health-enhancing vitamins, minerals and fiber in their place. In Pigspeak, vitamins, minerals and fiber can be summed up in one word: boring.

To be fair, vegetables haven’t always gotten the treatment they deserve. Who hasn’t been presented with a “salad,” only to find a chunk of tasteless or wilted iceberg lettuce and three slices of mealy, pink tomato? Who hasn’t endured a mushy mess of something green (Could it be spinach? Brussels sprouts maybe?), boiled into obscurity? Well, I think it’s about time vegetables got some decent PR. You know, the way any chain restaurant worth its salt would present their entrees on television, with a husky female voice cooing the delights of whatever gooey, greasy concoction is being introduced to the menu. I’m talking hard-core food marketing at its come-hither, can’t-resist-it, verging-on-pornography best.

So here goes: Veggie Erotica!

Have a salad. You know you want it. Sensuous slivers of sweet yellow pepper and ruby red tomatoes dripping in juice, slathered with a silky vinaigrette. Doesn’t the glistening olive oil give you the shivers?

It’s time for a languid lunch with crunch; crisp string beans, lightly steamed and steamy, fragrant with the seductive scent of garlic and dill. Undress their lush, long-legged beauty with your eyes.

Let’s get it on with luscious lobes of creamy white cauliflower, sure to leave you quivering with roasted, toasted, smoky goodness. They’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse… to eat.

Hey, is it possible that the problem isn’t that vegetables are too boring, but that vegetables are too sexy? Could that be why we insist on covering them up, like a modern day version of Victorian nudes? A modest cheese sauce. Demure ranch dressing. Bashful butter. Blushing bread crumbs. Anything to avoid having to look at the naughty bits on a head of broccoli.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? An entire world of culinary delight awaits and we’ve been conditioned to turn our backs on it. It’s understandable in some ways. I’m sure each of you can remember being seven and vowing that you would never eat those icky looking peas again. Of course, there were probably many other foods you found disgusting at the age of seven, but that didn’t stop you from developing an adult fondness for smoked salmon or gorgonzola cheese or even <shudder> olive loaf.

Vegetables are the best friend a formerly fat person can have. Tasty, filling, and, yes, a bit sexy. Shock the heck out of your neighbors. Eat your veggies!