“I challenge you to eating only fish, rice, and vegetables for three days. If by the second day, you are still not feeling tortured, I will shut up about my diet for the rest of my life,” says my friend.
“Can I just have my one cup of coffee for breakfast?”
“No dairy products,” he replies.
“But… I really just need that one cup a day. And I must have it with milk. Otherwise, I cannot survive.”
“Okay,” he relents. “Just that one cup. After that, no dairy products, no meat, no sweetened drinks. Only fish, rice-based food, and vegetables.”
“Challenge accepted,” I announce.
My friend has severe eczema – the wounds on his body are constantly itchy and for the longest time, his scars did not seem to heal. Then, a doctor decided to put him on a diet test – only fish, vegetables and rice – and signs of healing started showing.
But it was certainly a torturous diet for someone who loved his sweetened canned drink after dinner and, cakes and candy for dessert.
To me, I thought it sounded easy – at first. You can cook fish in so many ways, I thought. And there are so many kinds of vegetables. Plus so many ways to cook vegetables – salad, broiled, sauteed, steamed, stir-fry… and I ramble on.
Annoyed, he issued me a challenge. Pride collide – I said yes.
On day one, my mother (head chef and menu coordinator) had to highlight the change in my diet and ensure that those three foods were on the dinner table. It was not unusual to have vegetables, fish and rice at dinner – so I thought that was a simple arrangement.
But as the days went on, I realized that it was not so much the ease of being able to access these foods, as per the company I was eating it with.
There were times when I just could not go to a cafe – because I could not drink more than one cup of coffee a day and I could not eat cakes. That meant missing out on some girly hang out and chit-chat.
There were times when my family was chomping down beef and I had my bowl of… fish. Of all meats, I love beef. Not that I do not like fish, I do. But I really love beef.
And there were times when it was just too difficult to find affordable fish-based meals at hawker centre, unless it was fish soup. Fish soup and porridge begins to be kind of tasteless.
So much for my rambling that you could cook fish in a thousand different ways, huh.
That was when I realised that what we enjoy eating is really set by our social environment. If I lived alone, perhaps I could have eaten fish, vegetables and rice for the rest of my life – of course cooked in fanfare everyday. But when we live with friends, family, colleagues – sometimes missing out on a meal meant missing out on advantageous information or emotions that bind.
Sometimes, it pays to be on a diet alone. Then we would not take the ability to eat anything we want for granted, and have a bit more compassion for people different from us – different diets and different perspectives.
I hope I never have to give up coffee for anything, though.
Set Forth 