The Juice

I am not really a pill person. In fact, I don’t really know anyone who is a pill person:

Waiter: Welcome Pharmanoodles where we have pills and noodles.

Woman: I’ll have the Pad Thai… wait, you have pills! I’ll just take pills.

I guess Meth Addicts would be more of a pill person:

Meth Addict: Ahhh, dragons!

Which brings me to the point. Why do so many Americans take pills when the cost of a better diet is way cheaper? I’m not really spouting any new information. Hippocrates, a dead dude who invented malpractice, said “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.” Exercise and diet are the key to healthiness.

The cost of medications alone should be enough sway people to eat healthier. But Americans have to do things in the extreme. Why take one pill when you can take nine? Your meds are making you depressed? Take another pill. But better diets can reduce the pill load. There is really no secret to healthy eating. Eat more vegetables. Americans treat vegetables with disdain and suspicion like someone decided to take shit on their plate. Fast food reinforces this believe by only offering vegetables that could double as toilet paper and often do.

Meth Addict: Ahhh, dragons!

Me: Could you stop that? I’m trying to write a humor piece. Here, have some juice.

There is this widespread belief that vegetables will not nourish our bodies that we need loads of meat and carbs. But there is a big difference between nourish and satiate. Large portions of carbs and meat satiate, they make you not feel hungry. But they don’t nourish. Nourishing the body involves adding vitamins the body needs to keep it running. So completely lacking vegetables leads to a deficiency in the vitamins the body needs to keep running propperly so we use medication to keep those processes going.

So for me, it’s a very simple equation. I could spend a lot of money on medication or spend money on vegetables. So I’ve decided to start juicing. It’s like packing in a metric shit ton of vegetables into a cup. What could be more American than cramming something into thirty-two ounce cup? I can’t just go halfway maybe include more veggies on the plate than meat and carbs. I want to take a giant mound of veggies, more than a human could possibly eat in a day and condense it into a cup. Juicing is probably the most extreme version of vegetable intake. It’s so extreme that it’s sounds like some drug fad.

Meth Addict: Man you got the juice? I need a hit!

Dealer: Sorry, all I have is Meth. It takes too much time to juice and it’s too hard to clean up after juicing.

Meth Addict: Sounds logical to me…

Dealer: People will suck your dick for Meth. Unless they’re vegan. Then they’ll do it for juice.

Meth Addict: Do you really want Meth addicts to suck your dick? I have no teeth and scabs.

Dealer: I don’t think healthy sexual relations really play into the dealer/addict relationship.

Meth Addict: We sound like we should be in graduate school.

Dealer: That’s a good idea. Maybe I can give myself options besides a life of crime through education.

Five years later: The Dealer has graduated with his Chemistry PHD. He is giving the valedictorian speech.

Dealer: Hello class of 2018. The job market still sucks and there is nothing for my education level. I have more student loan debt than I can possibly pay off. But at least I can fall back on selling Meth!

Juicing involves piling more vegetables than a third-world nation family sees in a year on the counter, putting them in a machine, and drinking them in a tiny little cup. If you do it right, they taste pretty good. If your like me, you just sort of cram everything into the juice including the cat hiding under the vegetable pile. And juice the stuff which doesn’t always taste so good. So I’ll be sipping a juice feigning the wonderfulness of my drink and my wife doesn’t really believe it.

I’m drinking some brown goop while cringing.

Me: This is great!

Another sour face.

Wife: Un-huh.

Me: You want some?

Wife: No.

Another butthole pucker face.

Me: Are you sure?

Wife: Yes.

For some reason, she didn’t trust me. But isn’t that how all relationships are? They just don’t trust you when you meet your completely platonic friend in the a hotel room with a teddy bear, flowers, candy, and a box of condoms. They don’t believe you when you say you are simply filming a webseries about a teddy bear that uses a box of condoms to make balloon animal friends.

Teddy: Jeepers, that’s quite the long neck mister giraffe.

Giraffe: Only when I’m excited.

Laugh track.

Teddy: Are you sure there is candy in the magical flower forest?

Giraffe: There is but it’s guarded by a troll and you have to suck his dick.

Teddy: Wowza!