I read with interest the recent New York Times article on the diminished appetite of American children towards vegetables and other healthy foods (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/opinion/junk-food-picky-eaters.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share).
I can relate to that pickiness. Growing up in the 1950s I was a poster boy for underweight kids, though I didn’t have the distended stomach one sees in the truly malnourished. Despite my mother’s nudging and cajoling I partook few foods that would fatten me up beyond the skin and bones that earned me nicknames such as “skinnymalink.”
My parents, mostly my mother, tried hard to fatten me up. They had my sister make me daily milk shakes spiked with a raw egg. They threatened to send me to a fatten-up farm instead of a traditional summer camp. They relented on that threat but arranged with the camp mother to give me a double portion of afternoon chocolate milk and cookies.
Nothing worked.
To this day I am overly conscious of my thin arms and legs. I developed a defense mechanism of joking about my “chicken legs” before others tease me.
I am convinced I never learned to swim because I hated being seen wearing just a swim suit. Of course, by the time I was an sports-minded teenager I had no shame playing softball, volleyball, soccer, and basketball wearing just shorts, socks and sneakers.
Ultimately, my thinness paid off. As related in previous blogs, I flunked my Vietnam War era draft physical because I was underweight for my height. The Armed Services required at least 131 pounds over my six foot frame. I tipped the scale at 124 pounds during my physical at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn. I’m forever indebted to Dr. Stillman for his protein and water diet that enabled me to lose 10 pounds during the 10 days prior to my physical (https://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2019/12/139-memories-of-draft-lottery-50-years.html).
Though my culinary tastes became more refined after marrying Gilda, I retained aversions to many cooked vegetables.
TWA changed my diet. Upgraded to first class for a transcontinental flight in the early 1980s, I was served cold asparagus as an appetizer to a steak entree. My only prior experience with asparagus was the limp overcooked version my mother served once. My father was a strictly meat/chicken/potatoes-with-Jewish-rye-bread man, though our preferred baker was in fact Polish. Nothing green graced his dinner table. I followed in his footsteps despite Gilda’s attempts to broaden my palate.
So when a TWA stewardess placed a green asparagus appetizer on the tray before me, I figured I had nothing to lose trying it. The stalks were cold, crisp, delicious. I was converted, so much so that one of the favorite meals I recall included thick, white asparagus served during a business dinner near Dusseldorf, Germany, with executives of Boston Retail Products attending a EuroShop convention in early 1990s.
Expanding my diet did not mean I forsook some—or any—of my lifelong favorites—breads, cookies, cakes, chocolates. Though I didn’t put on pounds, my cholesterol and triglycerides numbers skyrocketed.
On a plane on our way to Prague for a speaking engagement in the mid-1990s, Gilda informed me she was tired of my always needing to stop at a bake shop for a quick nosh. Prague is known for its baked delicacies, but Gilda decreed we were immediately starting the Dr. Atkins diet that restricted sweets and carbohydrates in favor of proteins. For the next 10 years we ate a modified Atkins diet, modified in that we consumed fruits and vegetables, but no starches and carbohydrates. My only permitted indulgence was whipped cream, a savory concoction still part of my daily breakfast ritual of nuts and fruit.
My triglycerides, which had peaked above 1,000, are now down to 157. My cholesterol, 139. I’m still a picky eater, but I enjoy a much more well rounded, balanced diet, thanks to Gilda, Dr. Stillman and Dr. Atkins.
