Eating fruit and vegetables

is important - of course it is important. 

Apparently my generation eats more of these things than the next generation. We also tend to be slightly more overweight and exercise less....but yes, we are older too.

I thought of this yesterday when a friend phoned to inquire about the Senior Cat.  We first met D... through the Senior Cat's brother and he has remained a friend. He phones about once a month and we exchange news. This time he told me he had lost weight - seven kilos. It has taken him around twelve months to do this...smaller portions and more exercise. He now weighs what his doctor suggested.

Unlike most people D... will almost certainly not put that weight on again. He was eating sensible food from the start, just too much of it. He had a hip replacement and gradually increased the distance he walks as part of his rehabilitation. 

We both know how difficult it is to do these things at any time but it is even more difficult when we both effectively live alone. I know I need to watch what I eat. I have lost weight since the Senior Cat moved into the residence. It has been relatively easy to do because his dietary needs were different from mine and I have been able to cut back on the things I know I don't need. 

I didn't try and just cut them out immediately. I ate less of them. Just recently I made a dessert - baked apples and custard - for the first time in months when a friend came for lunch. Both of us had small portions and enjoyed them but I would have been just as happy with a fresh apple.

I remember childhood desserts. All too often these had to be tinned fruit and custard made with powdered milk. This was not what my mother would have chosen but what was available. 

When we lived in a remote community we went about once a month to a larger "town" (a small village size in England) and there would be a limited range of fresh fruit available...apples, oranges, and bananas. My mother would buy these things and whatever vegetables were available. (The "general store" in our tiny place only sold potatoes and pumpkin and - occasionally - carrots.) 

While she was doing this we were sometimes allowed to sit on the ground outside and very slowly and carefully eat a single scoop of vanilla icecream. (It was scooped out of a large silver container and put into a pale "biscuit" cone.) If there were other frozen delights available we did not know about them but we loved those icecream cones.

And then, on the long journey "home" my mother would hand out one apple each. For us these were as good as any amount of sweets. We ate them as slowly as we had eaten the icecream. We would nibble around and around so that apple grew smaller and smaller. Only when there was nothing left but a few pips and the stalk did we sigh and stop. (We also tried, completely without success, to plant the pips.) 

The local women would sometimes make "toffee apples" for events like the schools' sports day held in another town or the annual show. The apples they used for this were never quite the same. Oh, we liked them - perhaps the more so because our mother didn't really approve of them.  No, a real apple was a treat back then. We were less keen on bananas because the skins were often almost black and the fruit inside tended to be soft and squishy. I am not that fond of bananas even now. 

We had to wait until Christmas for strawberries in "fruit salad" and a handful of fresh cherries. We would have had no idea what a mango or pawpaw was and "kiwi" fruit (Chinese gooseberries) were something I did not see until I went to London as a young adult. Despite all this we loved the limited range of fruit and vegetables available. 

Now you can get some of these things all year round. I don't buy them that way. I tend to buy only what is in season. It is not simply cheaper it tends to be much better.

So why doesn't the next generation do the same? Why aren't they as interested in these things? I suspect it has something to do with the all too ready availability. It may also have something to do with the all too readily available alternatives - the packaged desserts and the many flavours of overly sweet icecream and yoghurt. There is also the "time" issue. If both parents are at work all day then dessert is not something which would be of high importance on the menu.

I feel really sorry for the youngest generation. They will never know the joy of slowly licking a cone of vanilla icecream and then nibbling an apple around and around and having it grow smaller and smaller.