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Just Stuff

By GARY ARRINGTON Sports writer

I now find myself buying strange stuff when I go grocery shopping. I don’t know about you, but my household ends up with products in the refrigerator and in the pantry that not too long ago I would never have known that they even existed.
First let me set the stage. I lost a bunch of weight a year and a half ago and I have managed to keep most of it off and I want to stay that way. My wife learned about healthy eating at that time and she has not forgot the past. In fact she now might be worse. The eating now is not the eating of my past that I so fondly remember.
I also have some health issues causing me concern and inconvenience that seem to be unfindable by the medical community. I know that is a strange word but it is accurate in my problems. I have joint swelling that moves from hand to knee to ankle and back making it more difficult for me not to act my age. Sometimes I believe that to be the problem though but then it still occurs when I behave.
Those two issues now force me to have strange friendships with food. For example, my wife makes us buy skim milk, milk that is really white water in my book. But I might have found a solution the other day, skim milk that doesn’t taste like skim milk or so the cover of the box said. I bought it, it only comes in half gallons making it more expensive, and sure enough it tasted more like 2 percent milk. I was excited.
Last night I went shopping again and I found the strangest stuff to date. The first item I found, and I must confess that I bought it, was raspberry jam with no sugar in it. I did not know it was possible to buy jam without sugar, as the sugar was what made it jam. Jam to my way of thinking needs to be sweet and that means sugar. I will let you know if I would buy again.
The next item I bought was honey without sugar. Are you kidding me, honey without sugar? That really seems un-American. It turns out that it is imitation honey made by imitation bees I guess. I have not tried that one either but again how is that possible.
The final really strange item I bought was peanut butter with no peanuts in it. Huh? Now really, peanut butter with no peanuts, what is this world coming to? No peanuts but soy instead.
So now I eat healthy bread with twice the fiber with peanutless peanut butter and sugarless raspberry jam or imitation honey. Who would ever have thought that just a few years ago?
Just to show you the other lengths my wife goes to for us to eat healthy, the other night she made what I would call spaghetti but the pasta was made with whole wheat instead of whatever is normal. And then she put cauliflower and broccoli instead of meat in it. Health might be overrated.
And now I even copied her. Last night I made pizza with fresh vegetables instead of pepperoni or sausage or any other meat and I almost hate to say it but it was good.
The moral of the story for me is simple, one must be flexible in what one eats if one wants to continue having the life that one has had. And that means paying attention to labels on what one eats. So I guess I will not complain and just eat whatever is put before me.

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