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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas and Harry Truman

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! We awoke to full stockings and a bit of snow on the ground.

Yesterday, my sister-in-law gave me a sheet she copied while reading David McCullough's biography of Harry Truman.

Truman was the thirty-third president of the United States. In his seventh year in office, when he was 67, he was described as a "picture of health." He walked two miles almost every morning, followed by an ounce of bourbon. In his diary he wrote the following about his diet in the early 1950s:

I eat no bread but one piece of toast at breakfast, no butter, no sugar, no sweets. Usually have fruit, one egg, a strip of bacon and half a glass of skimmed milk; liver and bacon or sweetbreads or ham or fish and spinach and another nonfattening vegetable for lunch with fruit for dessert. For dinner I have a fruit cup, steak, a couple of nonfattening vegetables and an ice, orange, pinapple, or raspberry…So--I maintain my waist line and can wear suits bought in 1935.

Not sure what a "nonfattening" vegetable is…Truman eventually died in 1972 at the age of 88.

5 comments:

  1. Those observations about Truman make me much more interested in him and I am more likely to read the book.

    I also had my own paleo experience of sorts last night. I had various aches and pains over the past two weeks that I was attributing to the season, various viruses, too much exercise, etc. Then I ate swordfish steak last night (minimal carbs) and felt miraculously invigorated and pain free today. Any thoughts on placebo versus swordfish?

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  2. Interesting. It's rather telling that the once-freely-used word sweetbreads has almost passed into archaic in English these days.

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  3. Truman was also punctilious about taking a mid-afternoon nap every day.

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  4. I've always liked Truman, these are some more reasons.
    Spinach is the example of a non-fattening vegetable. I think we all know what that means.

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  5. @George Henderson
    I don't know what that means.

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