Mommy, Who’s That Green Man Over There?

    According to the Associated Press, the folks in Hamburg, N. Y., recently had a kale-eating contest. Okay, you read that right; kale-eating contest. You know, that green leafy, bitter tasting plant that any good health-oriented cook book will tell you that you can’t live without---literally. 
    It’s been reported that goats have starved to death when there was ample supply of kale within reach. That may be an exaggeration. 
    The contestant who won this contest ate 22½ 16-ounce bowls in eight minutes. For you folks too lazy to do the math, is 22.5 pounds of kale. That’s a lot of kale. 
    One key factor the article didn’t mention was whether this kale was raw or cooked. If cooked into its normal slimy consistency, kale would slide down the contestant’s throat with little effort on his part. If it was raw and needed chewing, that’s a whole other endeavor. 
    This contestant is from Georgia. I don’t know if that gives him an advantage or not. The Georgians I’ve known were more into barbecue and things like that, and of course grits and boiled okra. Come to think of it kale is not as odd for these people as I first thought. Boiled kale and boiled okra would have a lot in common. 
    Good news from the health-promoting people, for this kale-eating person is that if he will repeat this performance twice a day for the rest of his life, it will increase his live span except for one thing. Of course, by that time he will have a green complexion, and his breath will exude an odor resembling a compost heap. He would live to the ripe of old age of 135, except that his digestive organs would give out about the second year he is on this diet. But, boy, would he be healthy in the meantime.