The Other Benefit of Good Food

My English reticence fights against what I want to say here, but the topic is one worth mentioning, so apologies and onwards.

Good food isn't just about the minerals and vitamins that it puts into our bodies, but the way it helps take out the unwanted stuff.

On the Michelin-starred restaurant trip last week we ate some very creative and superbly cooked food, drank excellent Gaillac wines, and lived well. Except that my innards felt left out of the fun, and though they didn't strike they certainly worked to rule. No wonder, as though I was eating perhaps 15 different fruits and vegetables a day, one leaf or a paper-thin shaving of asparagus doesn't hack it on the fibre front.

Yesterday I calculated our evening meal alone - Salade Nicoise of a sort, and fish baked in a crumb and Parmesan crust - had seven full portions of good f&v. French beans, lettuce, peas, sweetcorn (ok it's a grain, but...) tomatoes, peppers, cucumber and a few other salad leaves into the bargain. The plates did not resemble late period Monets, but they did satisfy stomach, soul and my digestion.

It isn't just the posh plates that lack fibre. On a long airport bus trip in Florida in 2007 we were horrified by an early morning phone-in programme. A 'nutritional expert' was promoting his expensive wonder-tablets for American women who only troubled the sewage-system once a week.

This chap's pitch was the miracle drug would solve all their problems. Having watched such women eating nothing but meat, starch and sugary stuff during our stay in the sunshine state it was clear they actually needed an occasional piece of fruit, or a salad worthy of the name. If they'd only opened their minds it would have opened their bowels. And it's all in the best possible taste, as Kenny E used to say.