Making friends with salad

For the past few months Neil, Rebecca, Jeannette, and I have all be discussing, in somewhat aspirational terms, the concept of healthier eating (not that our eating habits were that bad too begin with). In general, the areas of discussion have tended towards both the idea of favouring the consumption of relatively healthy foods (more of the problem for Jeannette and Rebecca) as well as the idea of portion control (more of the problem for Neil and I) .

Not surprisingly, aside from a few ambitious thoughts, little had actually been done to work towards these goals. Jeannette, with her love of breakfast sandwiches, and Rebecca, with her love of tinned cola, had make little progress when it came to avoiding their respective vices. Neil and I were also continuing to over-consume a variety of foods.

Shortly after Jeannette and I returned from St. John's the general consensus that was reached seemed to be that increased salad consumption may help with both problems. Not only would the consumption of more salads mean the consumption of healthier foods (assuming we can hold off on bacon bits and croutons), but it would also mean that portion control would be less of a problem as most of the vegetative ingredients in our salads are close to calorie-neutral (i.e. you can eat as many carrots as humanly possible and they won't cause you to get fat).

So over the past 3-4 days this is what we have been doing - having salads either with, or as, many meals. Though it has been less than a week, our ability to stick with the program has been remarkably consistent.

Of course, aside from more trips to the carrot store, there is not much evidence that this dietary change has had any effect. Presumably, I should at least soon start to notice an increase in my carrot chopping speed, or maybe even in my ability to prepare a red pepper.