Maybe you’re the type of person who reaches new heights of ecstasy when you sit down to eat a plate of leafy, green vegetables.  If that’s not the case, you’re probably more like me.

I don’t know if this has happened to you but I have found that when I plop myself in front of something to eat that actually tastes good, like a hot dog, Jack-in-the-Box mystery-meat taco or Twinkie, my actions set off an alarm at the Food Gestapo Headquarters.

The Grand Poobah o’ Food dispatches an enforcer who travels at the speed of light to lean over me, completely violating my personal space no end, and asks, “Do you know what’s in that?”

Let me just say to those food-content control freaks whose main job consists of sucking the joy out of just about everything, that, no, I do not know what’s in “that” and furthermore, I do not want to know.

If I really want to know what I’m eating, I’ll eat a carrot.  It’s carrot on the outside and when you cut through it, it is still carrot all the way through. 

I know what I’m eating when I eat a carrot but carrots do not taste nearly as good as Twinkies.

I weigh more now than I did 30 years ago.  I eat less and exercise more but every year another pound squeezes in and brings a few of its fat friends to join the party.  I think it’s because of TMI: Too Much Information.

Thirty years ago you could buy food without a nutritional statement slapped on the side.  We would eat recklessly without thinking about carbohydrates, trans-fats or glycemic indexes once.  We made our food choices based on taste.

Imagine that. 

We were also happier thirty years ago, mostly because back then we had all four Beatles, but also because ignorance being blissful or not, we weighed less. 

Didn’t you weigh less 30 years ago?  I did!

With nutritional labels being plastered on everything, even water bottles for the love of God, I’m so busy fretting over the calculating of various RDAs, cholesterol levels and sodium content that my head has actually swollen up with all that diet trivia and as a result, my entire body weighs more.  I’m so top-heavy; I’m surprised I don’t just topple over.

Thanks ever so much, Food Police.

They tell me I should eat healthy so I will live longer.  I tell you this: if God Himself told me that I could eat a cookie today and die tomorrow or eat rice cakes and live another five years, I would say, “Take me home, Jesus!”  I’m sure that Train to Jordan has a dining car where everything is served with a dollop of Cool Whip like God intended when He made it. 

Besides, I am of the opinion that preservatives and additives are not all that evil.  The prime example of this belief is, of course, Keith Richards.

Everyone knows who Keith Richards is.  You could go to some tropical island in the middle of the ocean and play the first unmistakable notes for (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and the islanders, as one, would pick out the remaining tune on their air guitars.  I think the song is even used as elevator music in Siberia. 

As lead guitarist for The Rolling Stones, he continues to rock despite being more pickled than a kosher dill.  He can’t register a BAC (blood alcohol content) because it would require active circulation.  He stopped brushing his hair in 1971 and is rarely able to walk a straight line but he still plays the guitar like no other.

I’ve heard a rumor from someone, might have been me, that Keith Richards actually died years ago but they sent him back.  For one thing, they’ve run out of room for dead rock stars with them dropping like flies these days and for another, they really couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.   He was still smiling.

So they sent him back and nobody noticed because he was so well preserved.  See?  Preservatives!  At concerts, a roadie sticks a lit cigarette in the guitar fret board, puts Keith on a dolly and rolls him out on stage. 

So while my own circulatory system might not be quite as polluted as Keith Richards’, I’m not taking any chances.  I’m eating my Twinkie.

And I don’t care what is in it.