Sinful Salads and the Women who Eat Them

So I have been eating a lot of salad lately. Everyday I buy about a pound and a half of salad from the Metromart about a block from my place of employment. My wife says it costs too much and she's probably right. Most guys my age are in line for pizza or fried chicken at the hot counter across from the salad bar. But I am pretty chubby right now and am trying to make some lifestyle changes so my heart doesn't explode and I end up leaving my wife living in a big house with too many pets and a snowblower she is too small to operate. This would be tragic.

I have learned that I don't exactly fit the "salad demographic." My fellow saladians tend to be older overweight women who perpetually talk about being on a diet. Ok -Maybe only gender separates us. They are well-intentioned in their lettucey leanings but hiding cleverly behind the cabbage crests and broccoli burms lurk high calorie foes ready to strike as my my friends take an innocent stroll on beet boulevard. Most people start out pretty healthy with their salad - usually spinach and micro-greens and hippie stuff like that. At the beginning of the salad bar, most people have good intentions - positing rhetorical questions to themselves as they pile on the cucumbers a celery. "I wonder if Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps eat like this every meal?" "If I keep this up, will I lose 5 pounds by the end of the month." At the begginning of the salad bar, all men (and women) are equal. But as people get further down the sneeze guard, they begin to fall into temptation. It starts innocently enough with things like raisins and sunflower seeds. But they can't let it stop there. Next thing you know some lady in front of you just scooped 4 large laddles full of hard boiled eggs on top of her salad. Like the beachhead at Normandy, the further you progress, the more carnage a person is likely to witness. Sweet Master! - some lady right behind me just dumped about 25 butter flavored croutons on top of that spinach. Hit the deck - she's called in a HiddenValley Ranch airstrike. "I am scared sarge." "We are all scared son." And the victims of the salad bar piled up. We enter into the blast zone - nothing but fatty crackers, parmesan, cheese stuffed olives and ham. At this point, one wonders about what legally consitutes a salad bar and could the metromart be held liable for this section of the "bar." And the worse part is that you can't put the stuff back - that's the rules. Once you dump a half pound of shredded cheddar on your salad, you bought it and have to eat it.

I have made it through the salad bar about 20 times now - like a WWII B-17 pilot I feel either really lucky or divinely protected. But I daily see people who think they are eating healthy walk out with cardiovascular catastrophe packed into their little clear container.

I wonder if we treat sin the same way. We all start out pretty good and imagine ourselves doing the right thing but when we get further down the road and the temptations get bigger, we fall. And the whole time we are deceiving ourselves into thinking that we are actually healthy when we are really not. Maybe we need to be honest about our choices. Maybe we need to either eat the pizza or eat the healthy salad and not try and do something in between and call it healthy.