diet

A Tale of Two Ketchups

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I faced a dilemma. I have 4 burger buns left, so I went to get the ground beef so I could make burgers. In my due diligence, I found pickles at the store as well.

Pickles aren’t a big thing in Trinidad and Tobago, and as the economy begins to show it’s colors, pickles have become harder to find, it seems. Now that I had pickles, I might as well pick up ketchup, and as Gladwell wrote that Moskowitz said, “I guess ketchup is ketchup”.

Unlike most people it seems, I don’t really like ketchup, but combined with pickles, it can be tasty for me if done right. I grew up around people that loved ketchup. The plates resembled crime scenes before someone came along with tape to keep nosy people out.

As the image indicates, ketchup is not just ketchup anymore, and for the sake of this writing I will suggest I’m not 16 anymore and that I found out yesterday my blood pressure medication was twice the dosage of a deceased friend. I also weigh more than I probably should.

Thus, the dilemma. I have two choices. Do I go with the one with less salt, for the blood pressure? Should I go with the no sugar added, which is 15 calories less per serving than the ‘No Salt Added’ ketchup? And why am I stuck with this choice? Why can’t they have no sugar added AND no salt added? That would have been a no-brainer.

I stood in the aisle dumbfounded. I did not want to have to decide. Given these two other Heinz options, I could not go with the regular Heinz because that would be irresponsible to my body, or so I have been told. Repeatedly.

Gladwell’s ketchup conundrum from his book ‘What The Dog Saw‘ came to mind; I don’t subscribe to the New Yorker because it isn’t always interesting to me, but in it he dances and pirouettes through why there are so many mustards but not that many ketchups and here, in this aisle, stood an odd requiem.

Altogether, I had 5 options. I could do without the ketchup, I could get the lower salt version, I could get the lower sugar version, or I could go stark raving mad and fling ketchup all over the store.

I opted for the ‘no sugar added’ option because… it was more red, had less calories, and probably most importantly, it was on the left. It was that arbitrary of a selection.

What I really wanted, though, was a combination of ‘no sugar added’ and ‘no salt added’.

Poetically, I did not make those burgers yesterday. I will today, likely, and when I do I wonder if I’ll be happy with the ketchup or not. Ketchup, it seems, is no longer just ketchup.

There’s a lesson in that, too, Gladwell and Moskowitz be damned.

If it doesn’t work out, I’ll just not use ketchup – my default setting of mustard has worked well over the years.

Battling The Trinidad Roseau

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 5 Comments

Bactris major Jacq.I lost 2 pounds of weight in 4 days. And I did it dealing with a Trinidad Roseau (bactris major) clump. It might be interesting to market the “Roseau diet”.

Roseau is, in my best description, weaponized chlorophyll. It’s nature’s answer to botanical warfare, designed specifically to keep out invasive species. Like mammals. Like humans. Like… me. Those spikes that you see in the photo break off from the stalks very easily. They go through the ‘cut proof’ gloves with relative impunity. And they cling together, thumbing their metaphorical noses at the Hedgehog’s Dilemma.

I loved every minute of battling it, and I’m almost a little sad that I’ve gotten rid of most of the clump, on the downhill slope of the battle that it is losing. The only casualty I’ve had is 50 feet of rope (264 lb test) that failed while I was pulling down some with the pickup, “Artsy”.

During the last days of battle, I’d come out of the bush – jersey and pants soaked with sweat. “Picker” from other plants, those annoying seeds that cling to you, all over my clothing and in my hair. I had half a mind to go into a Starbucks down here, order a coffee and sit down while writing in a notebook just to offend a few people, but I was too tired to bother.

There are people all over the world, sitting in offices, spending money on gym memberships, paying tanning salons… when all you have to do… is go outside and work on some land.

Thoreau was onto something good:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

— Henry David Thoreau.

Yes, you’re breathing, but when last have you lived?