Eating Out

May 21, 2020

There may be a silver lining in the pandemic. I was recently on a Zoom call (who hasn’t been?) with a bunch of college friends to discuss the challenges of aging athletes. In the spirit of full disclosure, I only qualify for the aging part. The call digressed into a discussion of the pandemic, and how everyone is handling it. One of the participants, a very successful restauranteur, described his experience as if his entire business had burned to the ground, and he had no insurance. Many of us our missing the socializing aspects of going out to it eat with friends and family, and enjoying the foods we can’t prepare at home. However, the restaurant owner, after three months of not eating restaurant food, has seen a dramatic lowering of his cholesterol and blood pressure levels.

For most chefs, salt, not sugar, is the secret ingredient, and salt is the silent killer. Everyone experiences huge amounts of water retention after eating out. I have always found that eating out is a two pound experience. Now that I am eating three squares a day at home with occasional take out, I am eating less and eating healthier. For many of us, this is the way we grew up. Restaurants were for special occasions…birthdays, graduations, anniversaries. It was a different world, but there was no pandemic of obesity. Donald Trump is our first morbidly obese President in generations. He is a national symbol for bad eating habits.

In “ Younger Next Year,” the authors point out that one of the secrets to aging well is to avoid eating crap. If there is any silver lining in all of us, more of us are eating less crap.