[Theodores]

I lube my bike on rare occasions, when it gets to the stage of dry/orange chain or gear levers that risk thumb injury to use. Then it is minimal effort with WD-40 by the bins. I then ride on actual roads that are heavily polluted by car dependent people before getting to the 'bike superhighway' that is the canal path, which I mostly use to get me where I want to go.

If there was excess oil on my bike then I am okay with it dripping off on the stupid junction they built for the car dependent people. It is an industrial waste ground.

I only got into the avoidance of processed food on a whim, to see if I could last a week without added sugar. I was buying garbage in the supermarket at the time, not sure what junk to buy, and I just thought to give vegetables a try. I had never gone a day of my life without refined sugar to that point. I felt so much better after that week that I decided to keep going, and I researched it, to find that there wasn't anything wrong with a modest amount of sugar, however, it was the rubbish that came with it in processed foods that I was also avoiding. Again, on their own, there is nothing wrong with things like palm oil.

I started buying vegetables that I had never bought before, even if I had eaten them. I now feel ashamed to have lived for so many years without buying vegetables that I now consider essential. Right now I haven't got any swede in the cupboard (rutabaga in American English), which is a problem since I eat that almost every day. Before my accidental nutrition experiment I had never bought swede. I also always have beetroot on hand, whereas there was a time when I only bought it pickled in jars. Nowadays I have no interest in the processed form, there was nothing wrong with it pickled, but my preference is to have a fresh bunch of beetroot, give it a scrub and get it in the pot for lush, succulent flavour.

All of these vegetables have phytochemicals in them, which I never really appreciated. But I did have pale, pimply skin then, whereas now I have skin that never gets the slightest blemish and has a glow to it, as if I have caught the sun. I have gone from feeling mildly ashamed of my body to being a bit vain, which is far better. I eat all that I want without any feelings of remorse such as those I might feel after demolishing a large chocolate bar or big bag of crisps (potato chips).

For me there is no such thing as too much fruit. Notionally in the UK you are supposed to eat 'five a day', as in portions of fruit or veg. I am on something way upwards of that because almost everything I eat is in the 'five a day' category. This is to the detriment of perfectly healthy foods such as pasta and rice, I just don't have room on my plate for such things.

Animal products became a bit of a chore and I found that I didn't really need them. So all of that went too. I found out that all the nutrients, micro or macro are far more abundant in vegetables and other plants. I thought I needed animal products for protein but I eat so many pulses, legumes, beans and whatnot that I am probably getting way too much protein just from my favourite plants.

I ended up not needing a fridge or a freezer. Both are turned off at the wall with no conceivable need to turn them on. All the vegetables have phytochemicals in them that keeps them good at room temperature, plus they aren't refrigerated in the supermarket.

I get a few plastic bags and a few tins, with a few glass jars for herbs and nut butters. I use a bread machine so there are a few paper bags from flour. Most of my waste is vegetable trimmings or fruit peelings, all of which can go back in the ground. I reuse the plastic bags that potatoes come in for my waste, so, rather than drag out a huge, smelly black bag of rubbish, I just have a football sized bag of vegetable matter to take out. I don't have a bin as such, just a small re-used bag on the counter top that I take out every couple of days. The small box of recycling will take about a month to have enough worth taking out. I should say that I am not even trying to reduce my waste, it is just a happy bonus that I have cut that down by at least ninety percent.

I have had one or two bad apples, but, apart from that, I have no food waste. Gone are the days of wholesale fridge clearances, taking out rotting things. This is curious because I do not use a fridge or freezer, yet my food is unbelievably fresh with nothing going to waste. Again, there is nothing deliberate about this.

I also question the convenience of convenience food. At the supermarket I only have to go in and out to pick a few vegetables and a bag of fruit. I have no shopping list, as, if I forget potatoes then I just make do with sweet potatoes, nothing is that crucial, I can just buy what is new season, on offer or what I fancy. I keep all of my receipts because I just happened to keep my first receipt from the 'experiment'. Coffee went at an early stage and I reckon that my entire food and beverages bill is far less than what I used to spend on coffee. Electricity and heating bills are down too.

I do not see myself as deprived of any processed food goodness and I don't see chocolates or even coffee as desirable. I want those phytochemicals in vegetables and only see downsides in junk. The whole digestive tract changes considerably from tastebuds to bacteria in the gut so I am not eating fruit out of an obligation to eat 'five a day' but out of genuine desire. I get genuine pleasure, as in a high, from eating really tasty food. With the processed food I had not been getting such sensations for a long time, just that feeling of loathing that you get from doing stupid things like gambling (where you lose all your money, I am not a gambler, but I have put money in a slot machine before).

There is also the small matter of 'the streak'. The pandemic set me on this journey, in a roundabout way. Before then I always put deadlines and others first, so nutrition was always something that 'was not me'. But nowadays, as I see it, a whole food, plant based diet, moderate exercise, maintaining an optimal weight and no alcohol is the way to go. I have never felt better and, touch wood, I never have days of sickness. This is my 'streak' and a desire not to break it is a motivator. That fateful day in the supermarket putting the junk back on the shelves to back up to the vegetable aisle was purely a whim, but I have not looked back. I just wish I had that thought twenty years earlier.

I did ask Google where animals get vitamin B12 from, which is bacteria or supplements. In the UK we have a yeast extract product fortified with vitamin B12 and that is the only processed food I buy. That and iodised salt covers me for what can't be obtained from plants. I do have some vitamin D supplements that I dabble with, but that is about as 'health nut' as it gets. I am not eating kale with quinoa and chia seeds blended into a smoothie with side portions of blueberries, just standard greengrocer stuff.

My point is to not sweat the small stuff. We only have so much decision making bandwidth and back to basics nutrition comes with consequences. I don't have to fear my teeth falling out or excuse myself from a meeting because of strange bowel movements, worry about forever chemicals or worry about the ethical minefield of animal welfare. It is easy to over-complicate our lives. Simplicity requires a very different skill, but a skill my grandma had all along.