OPINION: Pandemic paunches and bad habits

May 15—The pandemic paunch; it's a thing. Take my word for it.

We all know the truth. It's the carbs, stupid. Every time I eat any "processed food," I feel terrible for a few of days and gain a pound or so. I'm onto the lies of the sugar industry. If you cut down on carbs and exercising regularly, you'll lose weight. Unfortunately, that means shunning sugar, bread, cereal, pasta, potatoes and all that high-carb stuff we all crave.

A healthy diet wasn't always a big priority for my family when I was growing up. My mother, a Weight Watchers member who has been awarded "lifetime" status, knows that as well as anyone. She has been on a perpetual diet forever, even when she's not overweight. Right before we moved to Fort Gibson from Choctaw, when I was 5, I heard her say she was "going on a diet." I asked if I could go with her. She thought that was funny. In high school at Fort Gibson, when I didn't have a weight problem but liked to eat cherry fried pies, Snickers, and burgers, malts and Frito chili pie from Mac's Drive-In, she'd always warn me, "If you don't stop eating like that, you'll be fat when you're older." I usually got mad and responded with a nicer variant of, "Mind your own business." Later, in college at OU, I leaned more toward Orin's Pizza, Orange Crush, Crunch 'N' Munch, Skittles, and strawberry yogurt.

For the most part, the Poindexter clan consists of southern-ish folk, and we eat a lot of southern cuisine. My grandparents on my mom's side lived in California for a number of years around the time of the Depression, so Grandma Ashlock served healthier foods: relish trays, skinless pan-fried chicken (skin off), and lots of casseroles and steamed veggies. On my dad's side, my grandmother was famous for her cheeseburgers, fried cabbage, fried green beans and bacon, chicken deep-fried in Crisco (skin on), and "Grandma's Toast," which was buttered on one side, fried on the griddle, then served with peanut butter and grape jelly. She kept a jar of bacon grease on the stove.

As kids, we ate a lot of game, but not because it was better for you, but because my dad was usually too cheap to buy meat at the store. I know now that we butchered the occasional pig or fatted calf, although at the time, we were led to believe the animals in our barnyard were sold to kindly families with idyllic pastures, whereas the packages we picked up at White's Slaughterhouse came from unknown and probably ill-tempered animals my dad procured from the Tahlequah sale barn. City kids hear lies about the Tooth Fairy; farm kids hear lies about what happened to their beloved animals. I remember accompanying my dad to the sale barn several times, and watching through the rear window of the truck as the calf of the moment slathered the livestock rack with green poo. The feces-caked calf was then sold to one of those nice fellows, who took Flossie or Butch home to be a cherished pet for his kids.

My parents did go through an inexplicable health phase when one of them got ahold of that Euell Gibbons book, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus." Again, it probably had as much to do with frugality as health, because we had plenty of wild asparagus in our yard, along with an endless supply of dandelions. We ate dandelion greens, dandelion roots, dandelion heads, and my parents even covertly made dandelion wine. We kids were allowed a taste, but we were repeatedly told not to tell any of our Baptist friends about the jars tucked discretely into a cranny in the storm cellar. Not that we wanted to tell anyone; the stuff was disgusting.

My dad was veering off the skinflint path by the time my youngest sister came along. She was allowed all the junk she wanted — things we older kids were told we couldn't "afford." Eventually she started turning up her nose at real food. One Thanksgiving, my mom's parents were at the house, and my youngest sister eschewed everything on the table but the ham and dinner rolls. My mom had made her a box of macaroni and cheese, and the child poured a bag of Skittles and some chips onto her plate as "side dishes." My grandmother couldn't restrain herself, and she said, "Marilyn, you ought to make that child eat something besides junk." My grandmother also got the polite variant of, "Mind your own business."

Now, having made mistakes with my own son, who was revealed to be a sneak-eater of honey buns in high school, I'm now of a mind that if you have kids in the house, you shouldn't buy any processed foods. Ever. I say feed them spinach and cantaloupe and the occasional sliver of lean meat, and if they deserve it, a made-from-scratch cookie. Convince them, with the fervor of religious zealotry, that junk-food purveyors are evil. By the time they figure out your scheme, maybe they'll have developed healthy eating habits.

Or maybe not. The NSU swimming pool has problems, and I have problems at work, and all come together to ensure that I'm not available to exercise until 9 p.m. That, for people my age, is bedtime. I'm really glad I didn't give away all my fat clothes, because I have a feeling I'm going to need them.