health food phase

It would be hard to describe Patrick Holford's NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible to anyone unfamiliar with a pumpkin seed. It is even harder to imagine of what Patrick Holford's OLD Optimum Nutrition Bible might have consisted. I suspect the NEW one is even less 'fun with Patrick' than the OLD one and this is a reliable assumption because it would be hard to imagine anything less enticing than this NEW ecyclopaedia of joyless eating. The fact is that Patrick's presence in our home marks a return to the 'Health Food Phase' I went through in my teenage, vegetarian years. This was a phase much embraced and ecouraged by our mother who was ahead of her time in her eco-friendly, recycling egg-shells, organic home grown honey ways. We were raised by a woman so devoted to the medicinal benefits of honey that she even proposed it to my sister as a cure for breast cancer. It didn't go down well.

I am not sure how long my relationship with Patrick is going to last. I have developed an alarming passion for pumpkin seeds, so it looks promising. I am a woman who likes to plan ahead. I have started worrying about my bowels and osteoporosis, and so I now force a bowl of my least favourite food down my neck every morning. Until I met Patrick I was starting to come to terms with my unwelcome companion over the breakfast news, oiling the waters my bowl of oats with double cream, maple syrup and almonds. My mother, of course had her porridge made with water and salt. She probably had honey as well. But Patrick says, no honey, no maple syrup and no double cream. I'm allowed almonds, but only twelve of them in the afternoon with a piece of fruit. So my explorations of the possiblities of porridge have been reduced to a mean teaspoon of flaked almonds. Perhaps this is why pumpkin seeds have become so alluring.

Patrick Holford's NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible found it's way into our home shortly after a chance encounter with a licqorice and peppermint teabag and a bout of Swine Flu. Not the most orthodox of romantic encounters, certainly not 'dinner a deux' over a bottle of Bordeaux. Luckily for you as a lifelong amnesiac I have forgotten the details but suffice to say that the teabag and the bout of Swine Flu between them somehow weaned me off caffeine and I never looked back. I developed an insatiable appetite for liqcorice tea, though I never have worked out how to spell it, as you can see. As a consequence I had to trawl Health Food Shops to fuel my craving. As a further consequence I suddenly had to beg the unhealthy looking owner if I could use her toilet. She looked alarmed, I suppose she may have been concerned that I was too toxic, but she was, of course, ethical and allowed me to use it, eco-friendly recycled loo roll and all.

All this was a recipe for an slightly unexpected conversation about this bizarre craving for this tea which I had discovered by mistake. "Oh" says the unhealthy-looking Health Food Shop owner, "that is because it is particularly good for chest infections". I obviously looked dumbfounded. She went on "If you have been suffering with Swine Flu and chest problems then your body is telling you what you need". I was polite, but I knew the packet said something like 'aids digestion'. Either way, she didn't have any for sale. Which you or I, whether familiar with the pumpkin seed community or not, would have thought unremarkable in itself. "Well", says I, "who would? its a bit odd after all!". "No, no, if you had come in yesterday I could have sold you loads, but we had a lady who came and bought our entire stock of Licqorice tea, so we've run out, if I'd known...". Well, how could she have 'known' she would have a sudden rush on Licorice tea?

The nut addiction followed shortly after this strange development in my personal habits. I went back to my thin pale friend in her wrapped up in scarf, hat and gloves in her lightless, ethically heated and therefore freezing cold shop. I asked her about our bodies and why they suddenly start asking for things. She started to look alarmed again, like the last time when I demanded to use her low-level flush wc with its water-saving device. I wanted to explain that I meant nutritionally speaking, not the satisfaction of carnal instincts. She fully understood this because I came out carrying a copy of Patrick Holford's overambitious claims. Patrick displays absolutely no signs of carnal instincts. Even his sex life is rationed according to how much it depletes his levels of zinc.

A lady came in for a couple of crates of cider vinegar, another of our Mother's eccentric tastes. A friend had read somewhere that drinking cider vinegar helped to curb our appetites. A friend had, she said, lost a stone just by drinking cider vinegar. Patrick would have been appalled because our kindly earnest Health Food seller advised her to swill it down with a couple of spoonfuls of honey. To my horror I joined in the conversation. "My mother swore by it and she lived to be 79 and she wasn't fat" I said, which was disingenuous because she did also die of a hideous cancer, which even honey couldn't cure and she kept her weight off by scuttling around after my father.

I can't deny feeling a bit cynical. In the section about living a long life, he advises 'avoiding heavy traffic' and I can't help feeling I'd rather die young than count out my almonds in an Old People's home. We shall persevere, perhaps me and Patrick can work out a compromise, where I don't die of boredom and lose all my friends to an over-zealous nutritionist.