Health concerns versus holiday goodies? No contest!

Good luck buckling that belt or pulling up that zipper today. Personally, I make it a point to bring any article of clothing that has an elastic waist for those post-holiday breathing exercises, which consist basically of walking down the street to Phil’s Ice Cream Shop. After last week’s Thanksgiving Day feast, you’ll be lucky to fit into a Hefty bag. If there was a service called TurkeyMatch.com, I would advise you to sign up for it today. This is about the only way you’ll get a date after the mass quantities of food you consumed over the holiday.

Seriously, eating between these November and December holidays is a real issue. On the one hand, television shows are loaded with cooking tips and demonstrations, all designed to make you head to your nearest drive-through carotid artery ream-out center, which incidentally has extended hours during the holidays. The cooking segments on these shows typically follow news of typhoons, drought and the imminent threat of an outer space asteroid projected for a direct hit on New Hampshire, which most viewers couldn’t find on a map with a red x marking the spot.

You will be subjected to such tantalizing images as mashed potatoes in the shape of Mount Rushmore, with each president topped with onion rings, chocolate-dipped brownies and batter-fried carrots, for the nose of course. And it is not just food that is touted, but those triple lattes with enough whipped cream to insulate your entire house. Of course, they do come with warnings, like if you have too much of these goodies, you will develop a drawl similar to Paula Dean’s and start to resemble at least one person in the “Duck Dynasty” show.

Now you will have to balance this with the television shows immediately following the cooking segments, which consist of central-casting-looking physicians advising you to eat more healthy foods or you will develop high cholesterol, high blood pressure and worst of all, high hemorrhoids.

These recommended healthy foods are easily found in your back yard, things like tree bark and leftover Styrofoam, unprocessed of course. Blender drinks almost always have a green nuclear waste hue. I don’t know why healthy drinks must have the look of something that is leaking out of the bottom of your car, but I think it is a law.

I know a lot of folks now have gone out of their way to cut threatening foods out of their diet, not that there is anything wrong with that. I love a good piece of kale between drops in my blood sugar.

But I have some friends who took this a little too far. I visited them on their farm, which I think is another law that is required by the Food and Drug Administration. They don’t call themselves vegans or anything like that, but the whole ambiance had the feeling of Woodstock. Having the pack of dogs urinate on my car tires and being butted in the butt by a couple of goats may have added to the image.

Anyway, we had a wonderful meal of yeast and pond water, while perched on top of a fence post, since they decided to let the wild mustangs they were training out for a full-scale stampede to exercise for the day,

This obviously is one way to go. You won’t have to deal with all the dietary issues during the holidays. So much emphasis is placed on food consumption during these celebratory events. The only food concern I have during the holidays is developing rickets. It’s rare if you follow my own diet of drive-through rations. See you in the Hefty bag aisle.