Before the holidays, a few weeks ago, I had a wonderful chat with Joslin Poston from the Occupational Health Department at the Cleveland Clinic.  I told her about my interests in preventing diabetes and obesity, and getting folks back to basics [by teaching them how to tell the difference between real food and manufactured calories].  She just loved it.  I don’t know if she’s a musician, but I definitely struck a chord.  Hey, she told her co-workers, check this out!  They had so much to add, and I promised them right then and there that I would write about our conversation.

We got talking about our grandmothers’ old-fashioned expressions, beliefs, and bits of advice.  Stuff like “Kids should play outside.”  Adults, too.  A family practice doctor I know sometimes uses Facebook, especially on nice days, to remind people to play outside and get some sun.

“Eat your vegetables.”  Now isn’t that the truth?

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”  What a difference it makes to walk out the door with something flavorful and protein-rich in your belly.

“Chew your food slowly.”  That means you are tasting your food and relaxing.

Joslin added a few more:  “Kids should have gym at school every day.”  “There should be some quiet time for reflection.”  Yeh, what she said.  I started jotting these down in a hurry.

I remembered one that my mom likes to say:  “The more colors on your plate, the better.”

These sayings all reminded me of how we, as human beings, learn.  It’s common to hear parents bemoan the fact that their children have to experience consequences themselves in order to learn, and to wish that children would simply listen to their parents’ admonitions.  Wouldn’t it be easier?  But that’s human nature.  We, all of us, have to learn for ourselves.  We have to imprint the memories inside our own bodies in order for them to become knowledge, to become real.

Hearing something isn’t the same as knowing it in our gut, or in our bones.  Even our language shows that we understand the learning to happen deep inside.

So…as a society, we began to ignore our grandmothers’ advice.  We began to skip breakfast, stay indoors, stop exercising, eat no produce [count ketchup as a vegetable!], wolf down our meals, and NEVER stop to smell the roses.  And where did that land us?  Right in the middle of an epidemic of diabetes and obesity.

There are some things that no one can tell you, that you just have to learn for yourself.  But now you know.  We may have thought these little expressions were quaint and old-fashioned, but they are really much more.  They are the collected wisdom of our ancestors, the people who survived.  Ask Joslin Poston.