Cauliflower

People sometimes ask me how I am able to constantly write about healthy food. It’s a valid question, in a little over a year I’ve published nearly 400 articles on the subject. How do I have so much to say? Don’t I ever get bored? Don’t my poor readers and fellow eaters get tired of hearing the same thing?

Diet (a word I can’t stand to use) often gets lumped into the same category as fitness and exercise. And in many people’s minds the associations are not pleasant. Healthy eating means plain boring salads, steamed vegetables, flabby chicken and no fun whatsoever. Exercise means slaving away on a treadmill getting nowhere.

Only crazy people like to talk about this stuff all the time, right? I think so. But of course that is not what I’m talking about.

There is a huge difference between exercise and sports. Sports are fun, they are goal oriented. They are social, build friendships and self-esteem. People in every part of the world enjoy both watching and playing sports in some form or another. Sports are even fun to talk about.

When’s the last time you got into a long discussion at a bar about your bicep workout?

A similar difference can be pointed out between fresh, seasonal foods and flavorless diet foods (or even typical processed foods and chain restaurants). While steamed broccoli and grilled chicken can get old in a hurry, the changing seasons brings us a non-stop assortment of the freshest, most delicious foods in the world. It’s impossible to get bored when cherry season only lasts a few weeks and asparagus is gone before you know it.

Not only does the changing seasons mix up our plates and inspire new kitchen experiments, but the seasons are different year to year. Just like wine vintages fluctuate in quality depending on weather, so do all other crops. The cool thing about food though, is different plants flourish under different conditions. So each year brings new highlights and surprises.

Food is by far one of the most interesting, dynamic and pleasurable aspects of life. It brings us joy, makes us healthy, builds friendships and strengthens our community.

This food is worth talking about.