My recent gastro epiphany

It all started a year ago when we discovered a BBQ food truck at an intersection just ten minutes from our house. I thought it was the best mac and cheese I had ever tasted. But mac and cheese was on my no-fly list for most of my life. Now I’m a lapsed vegetarian. And yet, I know from past experience that cheese may be pleasure for my taste buds, but it’s terracotta to my colon, literally a wall of clay between my guts and the exit. For years it was forbidden food. But that food truck was a honey pot for my partner. We had to stop there on our way home and just try it, and once we did, we were hooked. 

Like any addict, I needed a bigger fix after that first dose, so next I ordered mac and cheese with pulled pork. They cleverly call it piggyback mac—BBQed pork shredded on a pile of noodles and fermented cow fat. Or as my colon likes to call it, concrete. Piggyback mac is literally the best food I have ever eaten in my life. Just plain white flour and animal fat. No fancy corporate trade secret, no tastebud grooming, no engineered sprinkles. Just fatty patty magic in a compostable go container, ready to eat. I plead The Fifth on how many times I ate piggyback mac.

Then one day last March my intestines had their limit of concrete. A sharp pain manifested in my lower right side. Then my guts excommunicated every last drop piled up in their miles of tubing and splat. It was awful. For hours. The experience made me nauseous. I felt like a pathetic character in some nineteenth century flu epidemic being ravaged by an army of hostile microbes. As it happened, I recovered. But I did not make the connection between that evacuation and any particular food choice. 

As soon as I could, I went back on my merry way to diverticulitis with smooth foods that like to stick around in the dark. I literally surrendered the menu to my tastebuds. For five minutes it was pure rapture. There was glory in it. For my mouth. Not so much for my other body parts. My belly swelled over the waistband of my pants. I bloated. I burped. I felt giant gas bubbles float up my esophagus and get stuck in my chest. And the pain in my right side was persistent. But once I formed the habit, meat called out to me the way the Sirens called out to Ulysses. I could have tied myself to the mast. Taken a different route. Averted my gaze. But instead, I succumbed.

There is a MacDonald’s every mile in this town and a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is my epicurean delight, food of the gods. Once I popped my cherry on piggyback mac, I lost my will to shun meat and cheese. I ate pepperoni pizza. Costco hot dogs. On weekends, my partner and I would line up in the drive-thru at Micky D’s and order two Quarter Pounders with Cheese, a large fries, and a large Sprite. Then we parked the truck in the shade, cranked up the classic rock and ate it while it was hot. 

I know, I know. I can hear what you’re thinking. This industrial meat thing is contrary to everything I have been preaching for decades. I fell off the wagon. I never hated meat, I just thought it was wrong. And it is wrong. But, oh my god. So, my intestines did for me what I could not do for myself. I was so beyond my previous righteousness that I was roasting whole chickens and eating the crispy skin right out of the oven, cooking with schmaltz and making gravy. I bought grassfed organic beef by the pound, made big batches of chili and meatloaf. When my microbiome interceded and threatened me, I rationalized. Until I had an unfortunate episode. Then another. My ass became a volcano.

That’s all I’ll say about that. The problem is I was in denial. I thought my Vesuvius experience was anomalous. I wasn’t expecting it to happen again. I went to Seattle for the weekend and while I was having coffee with a friend, looking out at Puget Sound in one of those swank old wood and leather cafes, the volcano suddenly erupted. In a coffee shop. With one stall in the bathroom. On the upper floor of Pike Place Market. While my friend waited at our table. I was hobbled by gut pain and nausea. Fortunately, she lives a block away and took me to her home where I occupied her powder room for a couple hours. That experience is one of the top ten most embarrassing moments in my life. I was miserable. Humiliated. But also worried about my intestinal rebellion.

That event occurred this past June. In a radical culinary adjustment, I went on a strict no legs diet. Overnight I stopped eating any creature with legs. No meat—beef, pork, chicken, lamb, bison, elk—and no dairy. No organic grassfed whole milk yogurt with honey and peanuts. No cheese omelet for breakfast. No grilled cheese. For a couple weeks I ate mostly tofu and sauerkraut and apples and peanut butter. My radical choice was effective. I lost eight pounds in a few weeks. My belly shrank and my noisy expulsions stopped. I feel so much better.

Now I’m struggling with moderation. Balance is a benefit I talk about, but it’s not so much a feature of my life. I really enjoy extremism. I like being impulsive. Fortunately, the BBQ food truck disappeared, and my moral indignation has surged, enabling me to drive past the half dozen Micky D meateries in my town. It took me a couple months to find a family doctor who would see me about the pain in my right side. Now I’ve had an ultrasound. It revealed nothing of concern. And I have a colonoscopy on the calendar for September. 

But here is my big epiphany: I do not live in this body alone. I share it with the microbes who are essentially my body’s operating system. My microbiome. My microbes have food preferences and piggyback mac is not one of them. If I don’t want to be taken down by another lahar in a coffee shop, I’m going to have to shun the animal fat and flour goo combo that becomes a concrete block in my intestines. I need to eat fiber at every meal. I can do this. I did it for years and then my memory of that habit was erased by cheese. I let my cheese habit creep up on me like juice from a fentanyl patch. Now I’m in regular communication with my digestive system and I have so much respect for her. She is my master and commander, guardian of my dignity. I pay my allegiance to her with broccoli. I leave her offerings of kale and cauliflower. And I kneel before her with cabbage. Fiber is the microbial way, the dietary truth and the intestinal light.