My brother called last week.
\One word, man,"" he said. ""Fiber. You gotta have that fiber in your diet.""
I agreed. Not just for heart health, either. Fiber is key for regularity and general digestive harmony. College dining isn't always conducive to a high-fiber diet. Pizza, for instance, is not high in fiber. Neither are vodka tonics.
""Now, what I'm talking about,"" he continued. ""I'm talking about oranges, talking about flax seed, talking about oatmeal.""
""Is this conversation related to you eating fourteen sausage biscuits in one sitting when you went to Mississippi for Christmas?"" I asked.
""Maybe,"" he said.
A high fiber diet can be hard to reconcile with the national Heightened Terror/Carb Alert. On my flight back from California I ordered the vegetarian meal. I figured if anybody's going to have mad cow-tainted beef, it's the airlines. On account of how they get everything from Canada.
You may not realize most airline supplies come from Canada. The oxygen stored in case of a loss of cabin pressure? Canadian. So are the floating seat cushions. Though I suppose that's obvious.
The vegetarian meal meant I got a cold bagel while the rest of the plane had warmed ones. The lesson here is that airlines hate vegetarians. I told that to the woman sitting next to me. The plane jostled through turbulence, and I went a little pale and pushed my bagel away.
""You feel it in your stomach because of your amygdala,"" she said. ""That's the almond shaped part of your brain, near the back. It processes stress, and the main nerve that runs from it terminates in the stomach. That's why when something's stressful you feel it in the pit of your stomach.""
The bagel they'd given me was plain white, and thus like most carbohydrate-loaded snack items--not a significant source of fiber. Airlines serve items such as plain bagels because they don't want people to go number two during the flight.
In fact, no business wants customers to use the provided facilities for that purpose. This is the root of the anti-fiber conspiracy. Consider State Street. Why so much white rice? Why do the grilled vegetables cost extra at Qdoba? Why the prevalence of focaccia (Italian for ""clogging baked good"")? Because businesses are banking on Americans' constipation.
Most of us have never been shot, but we live stressful lives nonetheless. The pace of modernity can be a swift one, and sometimes convenience is the master of choice. Conveniently available snacks and restaurant meals (low-carb or otherwise) are rarely high in fiber. Adequate fiber intake means shrugging off the bonds of a low-fiber society.
""There's only two important things in life,"" my brother said. ""Being regular and getting enough sleep. And if you ain't regular, you ain't gonna get enough sleep. So there's only one important thing in life.""
Upping your fiber consumption can seem a daunting task. Reading product labels, searching out whole grains in a sea of white bread, passing on animal protein in favor of nuts; the effort required will add stress to your life. But the regular sinking feeling in your stomach won't be due to your amygdala.
Louie can be reached at chunkkick@yahoo.com.
