Eating healthy can drive one to drink if you are too careful

Doctors, the medical websites and the guy next door will all tell you stuff like sodium is bad for you. It increases the blood pressure which in turn puts pressure on the heart, arteries and then you die.

Cut out sodium, they warn, while drinking beetroot juice and cinnamon. Great idea. So off you go to look for healthy stuff. Breakfast cereal – All Bran, Corn Flakes, dump bread for lunch and buy stuff like Cream Crackers, Tuc biscuits… cut out coffee and tea and buy some juice…

Then feeling really healthy, you trot home. While tucking into your Bran and Crackers, you look at a label on the packaging of what you just bought – a label called Ingredients. It is in about 3-point type which of course is great if you have rabbit eyes and eat lots of carrots.
And then right at the bottom, usually, of the list are those dreaded words: Total Sodium Content.
And there it is in mgs per serving etc.
You are mortified. You grab the juice. Same thing. You grab the white cheese. Same thing. You grab the Corn Flakes, same thing.
In desperation, you grab a tin of Coke.

There is sodium in there too but it is lower than the content in soda water which your gran told you was good for blood pressure.
You dump the Crackers, All Bran et al. Back to the shop. You scrutinize everything. Your only hope is that Maliga’s guys do not think you are some weird food fetish guy as your hold up various packets of food trying to catch a glimpse of the ingredient label on all the stuff. And there it is: sodium, sodium.
Eventually, you are exhausted and your eyes hurt.

You finally pick up a packet of rye biscuits – not unlike those dog biscuits they fed the troops on in the army where the word sodium was not known unless it was relating to some Engelsman reporting for duty.
Anyway, you have hit the jackpot. Those rye biscuits are damn fine with no sodium.
Wow. Now what to put on it? Butter? – out the margarine guys said so. Margarine? The butter guys said so.
Cheese is bad – all round. Marmite – no, sodium.

Your last chance is a ginger root. You go home, grind the ginger root, shove on a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and your rye bread biscuit is ready.
It tastes like cardboard but you plough on.
You know that bloody sodium in your veins is evaporating as you eat. The pepper chokes you. Your mouth is dry.

You feel worse than before and your eyes hurt from all the squinting. Sod it. You trundle to the local for a pint and regale the boys with stories as to how your health diet has changed your life.