The Rancid Rutabaga

It seams like the whole country is suddenly diet crazy. The are so many diets out these days, all promising to help you loose weight, get healthy and live a longer life. The diet business has turned into a big business, selling millions of books and flooding the market with a plethora (ooh-big word) of products. I have never been one to stand on the sidelines when people start to share theories, half -truths and marketing schemes, so here is my diet plan. I call it the "Rancid Rutabaga Diet."

This diet suggests that Americans have too many "fresh" foods in our diets. Even the foods that we don't get from the produce isle are either quick frozen or packaged under strict FDA guidelines. What we need to do is to age some of our fruits and vegetables. This diet could be called the Bad Bean, Soft Squash, or Brown Banana diet, but it's mine, so I get to name it. I am not saying that we should put spoiled meats in our meals. I am not trying to put the die back into diet. I am just trying to expand our digestive tracts a little. If Monday's potatoes are still good for Tuesday, try them next week. If your jarred fruit has an expiration date of 1998, eat them anyway. 1998 was a good year. I know some of you are thinking that I am promoting a form of anorexia or bulimia with this diet, I am not. The goal of this diet is not to make you vomit, it is to purge and clean out your digestive system, your whole system. This diet should clean your intestines and colon as well as your stomach. There could even be a local benefit when the country starts this diet; the papermill could switch from newsprint production to extra-soft two ply production for Charmin. This would put a lot of people back to work and really give the local economy a much-needed shot in the arm. I try to think of the big picture.

There are real benefits with this diet. First is the lack of waste benefit. Since we will be aging our food more we won't be wasting as much. This should really help out those kids in China that my mother kept telling me about when I was growing up. Our portion size should also be reduced. There is nothing like a little spoiled vegetable to cut down on seconds. We will no longer be a country of gluttons; we will be a country of sensible dieters. There will also be a big opportunity for new recipes. There could be new cookbooks, (another big business,) to help share ideas in preparing last months leftovers.

There may not be any hard scientific evidence to support my new diet, so what. The Food and Drug Administration doesn't control diets anyway, and I am sure that in a few years the scientific community will do their own tests and see the benefits of the Rancid Rutabaga Diet. I can base the diet on some past experience. If your tummy hurts-you don't eat as much. If you don't eat as much-you loose weight. My grandfather never liked to see any food go to waste, and he was trim into his eighties. Sure, he worked like a dog all of his life so a little exercises might be good with this diet. My father would eat things that would make a Billy goat puke, ("that fig is still good-just scrape the fuzz off of it,) and he didn't start to put on weight until Mother started throwing out the rotten food.

The people in the medical community support my diet-sort of. They all try to dissuade me from publishing the diet, and seem rather emphatic in their condemnation of the Rancid Rutabaga Diet, so I think they protest too much. The diet business is a big deal, they don't want me to market my diet first and make scads of cash. This is why I have to go public now, to beat the rush. This diet is not for today or tomorrow, it is for next month. It takes time to let the foods naturally age, and never let it be said that I am not for doing things the natural way.

I am not a health care professional nor am I a professional dietitian. I am a salesman, a promoter, and a SATIRE writer. The editors or publishers of this blog can not be held responsible for the effectiveness of this diet. They are protected by the first amendment. So plate up those old peaches, re-cook that old corn, and prepare to loose weight and to put more energy and excitement in our life. Bon appetite.