When it comes to food, there is one thing that all physicians agree on. We need to eat! But what should we eat? Little by little we are crossing items off of the list of what is okay to consume. It is becoming very confusing. Most people want to know…. what CAN I eat?

First of all, eat less and stay at a healthy BMI. Obesity is linked to about a fifth of all cancers. However, for many people, their weight will naturally correct to a healthier range if they follow a few simple rules.

#1 – GO FISHING!   Replace a few meals of red meat each month with fish. Americans consume about 2000 pounds of food every year! About 110 pounds of that is red meat. Unfortunately, red meat does seem to contribute to the risk of certain malignancies. We only eat about 16 pounds of fish a year.

#2 – BE FRUITY!   Make every effort to ingest fruits and vegetables in an unprocessed state.

#3 – GO NUTS!   Any kind…every kind…. be careful about those chocolate covered ones.

#4 – CHECK LABELS!  Trans fat is a substance that should be removed from our diet as completely as possible. Though cancer is the number one killer in America, heart disease is number two. If you want to die from something further down the list, learn to read labels and if there is any partially hydrogenated oil present, put that item back on the shelf.

#5 – WATER DOWN!   What should we wash all this food down with? On average, we currently drink about a gallon of soft drink a week! No way! No wonder we don’t feel good. We need to get back to drinking from the tap. We would save a lot of money, both in health savings and at the grocery store.

#6 – GET MOVING!   Get off the couch. You don’t necessarily have to go to the gym….just incorporate more exercise into your daily life. Park farther away. Take the stairs.

#7 – Finally, after dinner….DON’T LIGHT UP!   Nine out of 10 people who die of lung cancer have used tobacco.

Sometimes I get so discouraged! The culture is shifting under my feet. Everything is morphing so quickly. I lose my balance. How does one stay steady through it all?

For one thing, all of my “stuff” has changed. I now love my tablet the way I used to love my sony walkman..or even my transistor radio. And I plan on loving my driverless car or hovercraft someday!

Conventions are changed too. I enjoy texting, but sometimes I send snail mail letters just for the novelty of it. I used to consider it rude if someone did not join in conversation at dinner because of an online conversation with someone not present, but ……WAIT! I STILL DO!

So how do I stay current and up to date without feeling like a dinosaur? One way is to recognize that while much is changing, there are some things that are always the same. Truth is always true. Beauty and goodness are always beautiful and good. These things consistently are present, to some degree, wherever God’s image bearers (us humans) exist. So I am on the lookout for these.

Millennials are different from me. They don’t remember an unconnected world. They travel more. But they are also much the same. They still feel lonely and long for deeper relationships. They still long to be understood. The ability to stay in touch with many more friends, even though they are far away, is a good thing. But deep connections still take time and effort and they miss out on some of that. They are too distracted! That is one of the ways I think they are off course. Though there are others, in some
sense, they are better than previous generations. For one thing, I don’t think they idolize status and material wealth as much. That is a good thing. But then, they also don’t value authority as much, and that is a bad thing. So….

As I think about it, change can be good and change can be bad. But there will always be change. I am going to try and stay focused on finding, in these shifting sands, what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable. I want to focus on these things…to dwell on them and point them out and promote them. And when I find something that is truly pleasing, I am going to try and share it with others……sometimes by snail mail!

This weekend is Parents weekend at my daughter’s university. Yesterday I sat in on a literature class and I left energized! How long has it been since I have been stretched to think outside my normal parameters? To think deeply about the meaning and cultural context of a poem or a short story? Do I think of rap songs as poetry? Did I know that the United States always has a poet laureate to record its history? Sitting just through one college class reminded me how much fun it is to learn! Hard work? Yes? Drudgery? Never! At least not when you listen to a teacher or professor who loves what they are teaching. It is infectious!

So how can we infect our younger people with this love of learning? I confess I don’t know what the answer is to our education system. But it can’t be more testing or better testing. It has to lie with empowering teachers. Teachers hold the key to awakening the love of learning in kids. Personally I remember when history came alive for me. I was in junior high and my teacher started talking about how a personal disagreement between 2 people eventually led to a large fight between nations. Wow! Who cared about exact dates of battles? I was confronted with the big picture in human terms! I will always be grateful to that teacher even though I cannot remember his name. History was a living subject to him and he loved it….so I learned to love it!

Certainly, one of the keys to developing young minds is more reading and less visual stimulation. We were created with the abilitThisy to have vivid imaginations but that skill needs to be exercised. Reading about a scene and then visualizing it is far different from just seeing it on a screen. That is why it is often disappointing to see a movie based on a book you have already read. The characters look different than you imagined!

I believe that teaching is a most sacred profession. How a teacher is teaching children is often more important than what is decided in boardrooms by highly paid executives. It is definitely more important than the latest NFL trade. It is not the place for indoctrination of the latest social agenda. The classroom is for instilling the ability to read, the love of learning, the need and freedom to ask questions, and the confidence to seek out what is true. We, the parents, need to defend for our kids. Let them have their French fries for lunch. It is the Junk Food of the classroom we need to get eliminate from our schools.