Rick Koster: I'm in the loser's bracket

Rick Koster, The Day, New London, Conn.
·3 min read

Jun. 21—March Madness, the NBA and NHL playoffs, the college baseball and softball world series — all these recent competitions happened or are happening within a brackets format. You know how it works: Several sets of two opponents square off, the winner advances to the next round, again and again until eventually a supreme victor emerges, having survived every challenge.

Thanks to my overworked imagination — and presumably a sneaking suspicion that I could take better care of myself — a fresh bracket dynamic occurred to me recently.

I'd just eaten a plate of beet-leaves, quinoa and kale prepared by my loving wife Eileen — still popularly known in the region as The Vegetarian Who Walks Among Us (TVWWAU) despite the fact that some readers are weary of the nickname. To them I say, "Eat some horse jerky and shut up!"

The truth is, Eileen has her sorceress's ways of making that vegetable stuff taste ... pretty good.

Plus, it turns out beet leaves, quinoa and kale are among the healthiest foods a human can eat!

On the other hand, processed cheese and French fries on white bread — one of my fave homemade sandwiches — is, according to those government-advisory food pyramids posters hanging in doctor's exam rooms and school nurse's offices, comprised of three of the WORST foods a human can eat.

So, going back to bracket competitions, if there was one for food wherein, for example, Quinoa went up against French Fries, Beet Leaves faced off against Processed Cheese and White Bread went head-to-head with Kale — and the tournament was "Foods That Are Most Fun to Eat" — why, the Bad Foods win all three.

But if it's a "No Fun to Eat But You Won't Die Soon" tournament, the Good Foods sweep.

NOTE: from the moment I typed the period on the above sentence until the moment I'm writing THIS sentence, about 26 minutes have passed. I've spent each of those minutes trying to think of ONE "unhealthy food" versus "healthy food" pairing where I'd rather eat the good-for-you food.

Nope.

Not happening.

And before any of you accuse me of plagiarizing the following concept, yes, I'm aware: no less than Stephen Hawking, David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer and Aunt Bea from "Andy Griffith Show" — the character, not the actress — were atheists. And their individual and collective arguments against the existence of God focused around the proposition that ANY truly just Supreme Being would make fun-to-eat food GOOD for you. And the not-fun-to-eat food — sausage made of oak bark, tofu, corn-milk, flaxseed, textured vegetable protein (TVP) and cupcakes crafted from seaweed — would only be served by a devil in hell whose horns are made of tempeh.

Shrug. What are you gonna do?

I'm not suggesting I'm even remotely famous, but when I DO pass, there will be at least a few Health People who wave copies of this column and shout, "See? SEE?! Look what happens when you scoff at beans and oatmeal!"

They'll be right, of course. And I'll be in hell, chewing on one of the devil's seaweed po'boy.