'Bring on the Vitamines'

When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray hobbyhorse we chose. Because of her interest in the treatment of mental illness, I gave the teacher a VHS copy of Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies. In turn, she encouraged me to write about John Berryman and his Dream Songs because she found his alcoholism and its impact on his poetry interesting. 

One observation she made in class sticks with me: food inspires more myths, obsessions, weird ideas and eccentricities than any other part of our lives, even sex. I often think about that when I encounter one of my own unexamined prejudices. I don’t like red meat and most sweets apart from fruit. I find milk revolting. Three foods I hated as a kid – onions, mushrooms, spinach – I like today. Rationally, I can’t defend these things but that was my teacher’s point: they’re my aberrancies and I’m sticking with them.

 

Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was an American poet, novelist and anthologist who published more than 170 books, mostly mysteries and volumes for children. I’ve written about her before. In 1936 she published The Book of Humorous Verse. In the section called “Banter” she includes a poem, “Amazing Facts About Food,” by the prolific “Unknown.” It’s preceded by: “The Food Scientist tells us: ‘A deficiency of iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and the other mineral salts, colloids and vitamines of vegetable origin leads to numerous forms of physical disorder.’”:

 

“I yearn to bite on a Colloid

With phosphorus, iron and Beans;

I want to be filled with Calcium, grilled,

And Veg'table Vitamines!

 

“I yearn to bite on a Colloid

(Though I don't know what it means)

To line my inside with Potassium, fried,

And Veg'table Vitamines.

 

“I would sate my soul with spinach

And dandelion greens.

No eggs, nor ham, nor hard-boiled clam,

But Veg'table Vitamines.

 

“Hi, Waiter! Coddle the Colloids

With phosphorus, iron and Beans;

Though Mineral Salts may have some faults,

Bring on the Vitamines.”

Wells gives us an early satirical treatment of health food faddism. Related poems in her anthology include “If We Didn’t Have to Eat” by Nixon Waterman, “How to Eat Watermelons” by Frank Libby Stanton, and “Salad” by Sydney Smith.