Memphis is not a good city to live in if you want to eat healthy food. We have great barbequed pork, legendary ribs, excellent fried chicken and a wings shop on every corner. Pecan pie?  We got it. Peach cobbler?  Yep, we got it. Deep fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches?  Yep, you can get those too, the "Elvis special."

Whole grains?  Fresh vegetables?  Not so much.

According to the Forbes list, Memphis is both America's most sedentary city and its most obese. In any public place you can see people who are not just large but fantastically large, use-the-little-cart-to-get-around large. It says something about our city that I had a BMI of nearly 40, yet when I mentioned that I was trying to lose weight, a friend said, "You?  You're not that big."

(A BMI between 19 and 25 is normal. Up to 30 is overweight. Over 30 and you are obese. 30-35 is 'obesity class 2' which gives you a substantially higher risk of illness, and over 40 is considered extreme obesity.)

Even more telling is that I mentioned my weight to a doctor while discussing the heart problems I have as a result of scarring from an auto-immune disease, and he shrugged. Doctors in Memphis are very mellow about fat patients because they see a lot of them. 34% of people in Memphis are clinically obese.

Now, I'm very tall and I carry weight well, but yeah, I was that big. I was carrying around 100 extra pounds and I needed to get rid of some of it before it killed me. So I decided to do it. I completely changed my eating habits, and I've been fighting to exercise more despite auto-immune problems which sometimes leave me flat on my back. On Saturday, March 8, it will have been two months - and the first two weeks of that time I spent just taking stock of the way I was eating and trying to wean myself off Coke Icees. It's working. At an average of 3.5 pounds a week, I've lost enough weight that I've gone from a BMI of nearly 40 to one of 35 - two whole steps on the health scale, from "extremely high" risk of diabetes and heart disease through "very high" into "high" risk. "Increased" risk, I'm coming for you next!

Just a few bumps on the road - as I try to eat better, I'm learning why it is that Memphians are so fat in the first place.

The nearest grocery to my house is Kroger. Within a reasonable driving distance, we also have a Schnuck's and a Walmart.  I say reasonable driving distance because it's not really possible to walk anywhere in Memphis;  we also top the list of "Least Friendly Cities for Pedestrians." Memphis drivers think pedestrians are for sport.

I've been shopping at my Kroger for five years now, but I've been buying mostly junk food and prepackaged food. My husband and I both work at home, and we like to eat out, because it gets us out of the house. When we're not eating out it's usually because one of us isn't working and we can't afford to, so we buy the cheapest food possible.

Okay, let's take a look at that, shall we?

Totino's Supreme frozen pizza - $1.00

Can of Chef Boyardee ravioli - $.88

But I'm not doing that any more. Instead, I'm eating like this:

Fresh tomatoes - $1.69/lb

Beets - $3.69/bunch

Yep, that's almost 4 dollars for some beets.

Ardee posted a lovely recipe for roasted veggies last week. Roasted vegetables are delicious and scratch almost the same itch as french fries, except that unlike french fries, they aren't loaded with fats and empty of nutrition. Cost of some fries?  $.99 cents, Wendy's value menu. Cost of some roasted veggies - turnips, beets, sweet potato, apples, parsnips?  Just about ten dollars.

Hey, at least they had beets. I've been reading the internet, perusing interesting recipes, planning to try new things. Butternut squash, sounds lovely. Kale, supposed to be one of the most nutritious foods out there, what they call a "superfood."

I've been shopping early in the morning, because that's when they mark down the produce. I managed to catch the produce guy, who isn't usually there. "Hey, could you tell me where I could find the kale?  There's a sign for it, but there isn't any kale."

He looked a little embarrassed. "Well, you see, the meat department has it all. They take it as soon as it comes in and use it to line their display case. No one ever buys it anyway, so..."

He promised to get me some kale if I'd come back in three days. He promised me some squash, too - there wasn't any. He seemed startled when I asked, but not displeased.

On the same day I bought some parsnips, planning to make soup, and no one in the store could figure out how to ring them up. According to the manager, in the entire history of the store, no one had ever bought a parsnip. "Pretend it's a carrot," she said finally, and the parsnips were duly rung up as pallid carrots. 

I've gotten a similar reaction when buying turnips. "Do you like these?" the checker asks, holding the turnip aloft and examining it. "What do you do with them?"

I'm trying to be educational. Turnips taste a little like broccoli - you can boil them or steam them or roast them or cook them in the microwave. Eggplant, bake it or fry it or it also works in the microwave. Acorn squash, tastes something like pumpkin. Oh, you don't like pumpkin?  You know you don't have to cook it with brown sugar and marshmellows, right? It tastes good with just salt and pepper and maybe a little butter.

The women who ask these questions are eager to learn, their eyes light up, they all express a desire to lose weight, get healthy, feed their families well. "My mother is a diabetic and I don't want to become that way," says my favorite checker. "My doctor told me I have to lower my cholesterol," says the white-haired woman trying to decipher the labels on two different brands of ground turkey. (The one that's twice as expensive?  Is the lean kind. You're supposed to guess that from the number they put on the front of the package with no explanation.)

I can't buy fish at Kroger. I tried - they once had rainbow trout, which is my favorite fish in the whole wide world - but it was raunchy, I couldn't carry it out of my house fast enough to keep my house from smelling like an open grave for the rest of the day. Kroger doesn't sell enough fresh fish fast enough to have a turnover rate that is consistent with fresh fish. Although it's not the norm, as it is with the fish, we've also bought spoiled pork chops, chicken thighs, and tofu. The manager says, "Well, we're not responsible for that, it's packed before it comes to us," and does not refund my money. 

The manager thinks probably a customer decided not to buy the chicken and left it lying out and then an employee put it back. This happens a lot - when it's busy piles of food lie abandoned at the registers. We can't discuss why but we both know why - it's because many of the people who shop here are both poor and uneducated, and they can't do the math to figure out how many groceries they can afford, so they discover at the register that they are caught short. And then it's, "Can you take this off?  How much is it now?  What about the cheese, can you take that off?" for twenty minutes while the people behind them count floor tiles and try not to think about their ice cream melting.

No poultry other than chicken and turkey. No meat other than beef and pork. There's no duck, no cornish hen, no lamb.  I can't blame them. If they had these things, no one would buy them, and they would be as raunchy as my poor old trout.

And then there's the issue of whole grains. Kroger doesn't do whole grains. They don't have lentils, for that matter;  I have to drive to Schnuck's for lentils. Kroger does have barley, but it's pearled, not hulled. No millet. No quinoa. I have to drive an hour to Whole Foods for grains. 

It would be much easier to sling a tub of cheesy rice with broccoli into my cart and call it a day.  That's what most people do if they live in Memphis. We eat pork bbq and fried chicken and short ribs and potato salad and macaroni and cheese and hot dogs. And packages of Chili's brand loaded potato skins.  And Hot Pockets. We eat like bratty teenagers. And the problem is, if enough people eat like bratty teenagers, then the stores can't afford to carry food anymore, and all that's sold is Hot Pockets. 

I did go back on Tuesday. And the guy who runs the produce department kept his promise, he really did get me the kale and a variety of squash. I have a butternut squash and a spaghetti squash and I have plans!

What I did with the kale

1 teaspoon minced garlic (or equivalent fresh garlic)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 big bunch kale with the spines stripped off

olive oil as needed - I use spray oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Cook the spices in a little oil until fragrant.  Spray the kale leaves directly instead of trying to get enough oil in the pan, it coats them yet uses very little oil. Sautee the kale until bright green. Then add water to cover, along with the vinegar. Simmer 20 minutes or so until kale is tender. Great with pork chops and a sweet potato!