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The Prompt is a creative writing magazine. None of us are certified nutritionists or health experts, and many of us survive on a diet that is overly reliant on caffeine and cupboard snacks. But that won’t stop us from doling out unsolicited, uncertified, and unreliable dietary advice, will it? Hell no!
DISCLAIMER: Please talk to your doctor or an actual nutritionist before changing your diet to any of these recommendations. The writing we can certify is good. The advice? Not so much.
Kelaine Conochan
Greetings, class. Are you looking to feel, smell, and look good? Are you willing to take advice from a complete novice, who has no business providing advice because she has—more than once—rinsed slimy mold off hot dogs and eaten them? Well, then you’ve come to the right place.
Nutrition is simple, team. All you have to do to maintain a healthy, balanced diet and lifestyle is do exactly what you already know you need to do. The thing you have heard 10 million times but have been unwilling to do because you like how those bad things taste dunked in ketchup. There is no new information or approach here. Just eat your friggin vegetables.
Sam Hedenberg
Back in 2009, my band’s record label sat us down for an awkward conversation:
We were getting fat.
They said in order for us to appeal to our teen demographic, we needed to look more like 1957 Elvis and less like 1977 Elvis.
We knew what we had to do. No more McDonalds, no more KFC. We decided to go on a strict all-beer diet.
Can you survive on only 22 Miller Lites a day? I’m here to say yes, yes you can.
We lost the weight, and the fans were happy. But the record label ended up dropping us anyway. I don’t remember exactly why—something about our live show had gotten too sloppy, and they were tired of getting complaints about us being unable to find the stage.
But damn, were we skinny.
Jillian Conochan
If you’ve ever ridden the MTA, you know the most famous subway ads are for dermatologist Dr. Jonathan Zizmor, promising beautiful clear skin. Yet the ads that had the greatest impact on my overall health were the ones that asked, “Are you pouring on the pounds?” depicting body fat pouring out of a soda bottle and into a glass. The campaign was short-lived; the ads came down in time with Mayor Bloomberg’s crucifixion for overreaching his authority on the matter. But they stuck with me as I transitioned away from sugary beverages and into flavored* water.
*coffee. Water flavored by coffee beans.
Ariel Cross
Ariel’s Unprofessional Nutritional Pirate’s Code
No. 1: We all die. Some die later, and some die sooner because we eat garbage, but you know what? The garbage-eaters enjoyed life just a bit more, eh?
No. 2: Less fake and filler, more real and dense.
No. 3: The poor don’t have the luxury of nutrition, so don’t feel guilty for having a budget and not eating great. Enjoy the food you can afford!
No. 4: You’re still here? Okay, I assume it’s to lose weight, right? Here’s a hot tip: If you cannot handle the discomfort of hunger, then you cannot lose weight. Suck it up and chew some gum.
No. 5: Chewing too much gum can give you the runs, so be careful with that. 😉
No. 6: Good luck! (And if you find the magic lose-weight-and-keep-it-off-but-still-eat-like-garbage pill, please let me know!)
Michael Maiello
To eat, or not to eat, consider digestion:
Whether Big Mac and fries to order
Or Beyond Meat at outrageous fortune,
Or to open cans from Chicken Seas,
And onto crackers, append them:
To snack no more.
For the Flesh that snacks are heir to.
To taste, to snack, perchance to feast; oh, there’s the Sub!
When they have over-roasted London broil
They must give us sauce.
The chef is wrong, the customer so full of
pangs of hunger, thirst, the tooth decay,
On Yelp he churns unworthy takes,
When he might his own meals make
With a bare box, though? What Hello Fresh would bear,
The UPS man grunts and sweats,
From dread of retirement,
Of Florida, from where no one returns
And all the Applebee’s they have, and Chili’s (One and Too),
And fast casual chains we know not off?
Thus hunger does make gluttons of us all.
Devin Householder
Memorandum of Understanding
Subj: My relationship with food
(1) eat when hungry, and only until full
(2) eat only “on purpose” (avoid opening mouth and letting anything from any direction just fall in)
(3) make lists for fridge
(a) stuff I try to eat: fruit, veg, complex carbs
(b) stuff I try not to eat: animal products, processed stuff, grease, sugar/salt
(4) eat slowly, chew, savor
(4) When I eat and feel terrific, repeat
(a) when I eat and feel shitty (tired, gassy, queasy, constipated), review plan vs. actuals, reset
(5) ignore distractions: diets, scales, mirrors, instagram
(6) food is friend, not enemy, and I am the adult in our relationship
Mikael Johnson
Did you know that all smoothies either taste like a banana or dirt?
It’s true. Well, mostly… usually it falls somewhere in between.
According to the National Medical Journal of Scientific Nutritional Studies, any combination of (4) or more organic edible compounds put through a standard liquidizer process produces a “taste phenomena ” that forced scientists to create the “Banana-Dirt Scale.”
The scale ranges from 1-5, with a score of (1) representing the taste of a “Banana” to (5), being the taste of “Dirt.”
However, researchers were quick to point out that out of 863,000 tests, the mean combined score was 3.95.
Head researcher, Dr. Lars Hendricks said, “It’s quite remarkable, no matter the combination of fruit, vegetable, grain, dairy, or even something you might eat just to survive, like a leather shoe—you put it together in a blender, percentages say, its gonna taste like a dirty banana.”
What’s your Dummy’s Guide to Nutrition? Tweet us @thepromptmag and join the conversation!
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