Sorry Salad People, I’m Just Not Built Like That

When I go out to lunch with friends, there are a few who order the most amazing food, like wonderfully colorful salads and wholesome servings of quinoa and fresh berries. I even had one friend who ordered and ate beets because she wanted to. BEETS.

I have minimal experience with that type of food. Digging into a bowl of fresh fruits and vegetables is as incomprehensible to me as trying to fold a fitted sheet without crying. Yes, I know some people enjoy eating vegetables, but I’m going to need a team of scientists using charts and graphs to explain the importance of nutrition and why I should eat them, because man, I don’t like most of them.

Here’s what I like to eat for lunch practically every day: Either a frozen personal pan pizza (air-fried), or a grilled cheese sandwich made with fake cheese (dairy allergy) with a few pickle slices, or a Pubsub from Publix (turkey, garlic pickles, and a few jalapenos).

Just like a picky middle-schooler, I consume one of those three things for lunch. Every. Single. Day.

I used to force myself to eat different foods, such as cooked vegetables, which didn’t seem as gross as fresh vegetables, because I believed that if I made an effort, I might find something nutritious and delicious that I'd look forward to eating. However, I realized that when I did that, in true middle school form, I spent lunchtime reluctantly nibbling on a molecule of whatever was the least offensive healthy food on my plate and ended up throwing the rest away.

Sometimes, I still test myself. I’ll have sugar-free apple sauce or whole-wheat bread with my fake grilled cheese or a protein bar for lunch. But meh. Eventually, after trying that enough times, my last f*ck was discarded along with everything else on my plate.

Now, I’ve decided to eat whatever I want for lunch, which is mostly a motley collection of processed carbohydrates and fake dairy, and I’m as happy as can be.

Every now and then, I read some pearl-clutching online article about how we post-menopausal women need to eat healthy foods constantly. I figure the author must be one of those beet people because otherwise, they’d know that you can die on that high-fiber, low-fat, fresh vegetable hill, or you can just eat the damn turkey sub (occasionally with potato chips) because at least you’ll feel satisfied and happy.