Eat Your Vegetables

I was a very skinny kid.  I was never very athletic.  I didn't like playing tag because when I'm it - I end up being IT till the sun sets and my playmates and I are called back to our homes.  You see - I didn't run very fast.   Moreover - I wore eye glasses which were thick and heavy.  When they're new they fit my head perfectly - but as months pass - they wear out and I always have to push it up my nose so it doesn't fall off.   When I run in games -- I can't pay attention to my glasses - and one too many times - they fall and break.

Being a weakling and having poor eyesight - my aunts and uncles would always tell me that I am like who I am because I didn't eat vegetables.  I didn't like eating vegetables.  I loved eating fruits - but not vegetables.   I loved eating fish and chicken and mung beans.  When I ate Sinigang ( or tamarind soup ) - I will just pick the meat and remove the vegetables.  I didn't like salads.   I prefer the Lumpiang Shanghai - over Lumpiang Sariwa.  The former had ground beef or pork wrapped in the spring roll wrapper.   The latter is made of vegetables.   I always argued with the adults who made me eat vegetables that I didn't need to eat veggies because I got all the essential Vitamins and Minerals from my daily dose of multivitamins.  My father worked for a Pharmaceutical company so we had these for free.

I hated vegetables and I hated being told to eat my vegetables.

But this changed.

I am now an Omnivore - I can eat both meat based food and plant based food products.  It all changed one day when I ate in one of my friends' house and we were served a salad as part of the meal.  I remember almost choking on those leaves but I wanted to look cool and did not want my friends to know that I was not sophisticated enough to eat salads.

From then on I told myself that I had to train my tummy for vegetables.   I started eating Lumpiang Sariwa.  It wasn't too bad especially when I drowned the Lumpia with the sweet peanut sauce.   I also started eating Salads - first it was just Ranch dressing - then I moved on to Ceasar Salad - then onto vinaigrette.  Today - I switch between any of these dressings but I prefer vinaigrette.  I also started eating the vegetables in dishes like Sinigang, Kare-kare, even Mungo.  In fact for Kare-Kare I don't eat the meat.  I only eat the Vegetables.

I started loving vegetables so much that at one point of my life I decided to go vegetarian.  I was actually vegetarian for two years.  I am no longer vegetarian because I was actually fattest when I was vegetarian ( instead of eating meat - I ate a lot of pastries ).

What I do not understand now is - how can it be that some of the adults that I meet today - do not eat vegetables?   Don't they know it's good for them?   Moreover - they have children --- how can they make their children eat healthily if they themselves won't eat vegetables?