Eat Your Broccoli – Maybe

I got another really nice response from Geoff the Meteorite Man about the blog I wrote. I’m actually all a-twitter over your attention and positive comments. Glad you liked the terrier comment – that was my favorite too, and pretty apt, I’d say. Geoff, you’re a really nice guy and I have no qualms about shamelessly promoting your show on this blog and Facebook. WATCH METEORITE MEN ON THE SCIENCE CHANNEL!

Speaking of science, I like to use the latest scientific research to try and stay healthy. When they tell me to eat my broccoli, I’m all over it because it’s got some really good long words in it that scientists say are very healthy. Imagine my confusion today when I was reading Woman’s World – that half magazine, half newspaper hybrid at your local grocery store check stand. It’s a great little source of all kinds of information, and I bought a copy because it had a picture of Oprah on the front and she was looking pretty buff. I don’t watch a lot of afternoon TV, and the last time I saw her she was twice this size. The caption said something about losing weight on a bread diet. I said to myself, “Bread diet? Hmmm. That sounds like the perfect way to deflate my spare tire – if Oprah can do it and she was carrying a whole set, then so can I.”

I was picturing a nice warm loaf of bread with some butter and cherry preserves for breakfast. A loaf with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for lunch. And another loaf for dinner, open faced with a little gravy dribbled over it – not too much – no sense in overdoing the calories. Of course it wasn’t like that at all. You get a couple of thin slices of Danish rye bread that you have to bake yourself, and all the rest of the diet is the regular healthy stuff like 4 oz. of broiled fish and so forth. Not that it doesn’t look really appealing, but I felt a little let down about the whole bread thing. I was picturing little curls of steam rising off the top of a plump white loaf, some soft butter painting a light yellow coat over a thick, creamy slice, warm and yeasty and full of nostalgic flavors….

As I was saying about broccoli – I always thought you couldn’t go wrong with this particular cruciferous vegetable, but according to Woman’s Day, it is loaded with goitrogens. Yes, that’s right, those awful little rascals want nothing more in life than to slow down your thyroid function. The good news is that you can BUTTER your broccoli and it will keep those guys busy swimming around in so they don’t have the inclination to mess with your thyroid. I will eat butter on just about anything (which explains the spare tire) so this somewhat disturbing news has a silver lining.

There was good news about dark chocolate – it makes you a math whiz. It contains flavonols – the scientific word for lots of flavor – and they increase the blood to your brain so that you can be an Einstein when it comes to counting backwards from 999, something I will have to start doing a lot more often if it means I can have more chocolate.

Here’s another unexpected bit of health news. Just when I was starting to get good at texting because I was worried about using my cell phone (and also because my kids will actually respond to texts), I read that cell phones aren’t harmful because a new study says so, and they may even ward off Alzheimer’s. Imagine that. Not too long ago I was reading about the need to limit cell phone use and now I can use it all I want for medicinal purposes. This explains why, with all the texting, I’ve have been forgetting things lately. I’ll have to quit texting and go back to calling, which my kids won’t like but it’s all in the interest of good health and well-being, at least for the time being, until they come up with some new study.

And in conclusion, did I mention how much I LOVE the show Meteorite Men?