I am vegephobic*. I hate vegetables. They are foul-smelling, foul-tasting, and posessed of a texture that seems scientifically engineered to make me cringe. I recoil at the very thought of having to eat vegetables. In short, vegetables are evil. And I suspect that many of you reading this page feel the same way.
Here we are, in the supposedly enlightened 21st Century, where we can buy any number of wondrous artifacts to make our lives easier and more pleasant, and can sue somebody just for looking at us funny. Yet, despite all these advances, we are still bombarded from every direction with the message that we have to eat our vegetables, as though it's some moral duty we must all endure.
Well, I'm here to tell you: You don't have to eat vegetables! You can get all the macronutrients you need from grain products, meat products, and dairy products. You can get all the micronutrients you need from vitamin pills. You can get all the fiber you need from fruit (if you like fruit), or oatmeal, or various whole-wheat products, or a number of other sources. And the other phytochemicals in vegetables? The ones that you can't get from any other source? They have some subtle long-term health benefits, but there is insufficient evidence that they are necessary for healthy living.
The health benefits of having vegetables in your diet have been grossly exaggerated in the popular media. The instincive revulsion to eating those icky plants, which most of us have felt from early childhood, isn't something you have to fight.
*) In 2016, I learned that the formal name for a fear of
vegetables is "lachanophobia." I swear I'm not making this up.
Got a problem with any of this? Are you a namby-pamby vegan who feels that my anti-vegetable stance is harming mother earth's energy field? Then write to me at rogermw@ix.netcom.com, and I'll tell you why you're dead wrong, veggie-head.
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