THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 15, 1995 TAG: 9504150302
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Two scientific studies last week confirm what our mothers had been telling us since we were born.
Eat your vegetables and fruits if you want to grow big and strong like your father and live a long time, they said.
All of which is fine by me.
I pine for summer when viands from farms in Hampton Roads and eastern North Carolina clog markets and roadside stalls.
The sight of a stall brings me from the car at a leap, and my covetous gaze sweeps the produce like the eyes of an Arabian Nights Prince taking stock of treasure.
What astonished me about the studies' findings was the sheer volume to be consumed: at least three daily servings of vegetables and fruits. Five would be even better, they say.
Ye gods, scientists expect mankind and womankind as well to revert to the state of monkeys in mangrove trees eating fruits at a furious pace and grooming one another for fleas. (Well, something had to be found to rhyme with trees, didn't it?)
Formerly all-embracing ``mankind'' no longer suffices. And after all, Eve - bless her heart - was the first to direct her spouse or significant other to eat fruit. 'Thout her, Adam would have ambled around aimless in Paradise.
Ever obedient to the icon of science, I stopped on the way home the other night at the grocery store where half a dozen or so frenzied shoppers were loading their carts at the produce section.
They, too, had heard the word.
I fell in with them and bought bananas at 59 cents a pound, strawberries big as golf balls and nearly as hard, apples, oranges, plums, grapes, cantaloupes and chinquapins.
At the frozen-food bin I picked up sacks of blueberries and raspberries and bought a quart of cherry ice cream. And, fortified, went home and started eating.
A third study suggested we need not engulf an entire sideboard of seafood to reduce the risk of heart attacks. Only a couple of servings a week will do, they say. To many persons far removed from the bountiful shore, that would seem prodigious.
The scientists also urged us to exercise more. Even just a moderate amount will help. Walking is enough, if only for a half-hour at a rate somewhere between a race pace and a snail's pace.
If you have difficulty motivating yourself to turn out of a morning and walk, maybe you should become attached to a restless, muscular Labrador retriever - black, yellow, or chocolate?
Or any other kind of dog of your heart's choosing or of his or her choosing you.
And a cat will do as well, of course. There are cats given to walking, doglike. Or in their own inimitable way, walking sedately before a sudden, swift low-to-the-ground run.
It is wonderfully stimulating to run along after a cat on the rim of a 6-foot-high board fence. by CNB