My friend (who is a woman, and not the slightest bit overweight) told me that she makes sure to eat celery every day. "Celery," she informed me, "is negative calories." I had not heard of the concept of negative calories before, so I asked her to explain. Apparently, an average serving of celery has about 5 calories, and the act of chewing celery burns more than 5 calories, thus causing the act of eating it to consume more calories than ingested.
She smiled when she said it, as though she had discovered something incredible.
What does the rest of the world think about negative calories, I wonder?
When did we miss the point of eating? Why do we try so hard to fill our bodies with emptiness, instead of eating what we need to survive, and then giving what is left over to someone else who might need it?
It's such a tragedy that this country suffers from obesity, given the global need for food.
How terrible is it that people die by the minute over something that is killing us by its excess in our lives? I'm frightened by what the popularity of celery means for America. I think, in fact, that if a starving child in Africa heard about celery, and the whole negative calories thing, he would have a different reaction. I'll bet he would never want to eat celery ever in his life. It is a caloric parasite. Something we eat because we feel guilty about eating.
Maybe we should. Feel guilty that is, not eat celery.
I don't really have a graceful way to end this post. I just hope to think a little more in my life about the true purpose of things, so that I don't fall into a bad place because of their presence in my life: Eating is not something you do for recreation or to relieve boredom, dating is not something you do to reinforce your identity, the sabbath is not an observation to make you feel like a better christian, and charity is not about you either.
The list goes on.
As long as we are human, the list goes on.
The worst offense to a good thing is when it can be used to inflict evil on someone else.
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