Cosmic Apples

Cosmic apples. If that title sounds like a creative metaphor for some kind of nutrient-dense concept for the soul, I'm sorry to disappoint. Though, who knows, perhaps the title has come to me for dual interpretation. We'll see.

Cosmic Crisp is a variety of apple. 

I started a die...er...a nutrition program recently on a whim. My health insurance company targeted me with an offer to join one of several health programs for free. 

I abhor the health industry in America, and generally ignore anything they send me except for bills - which I review religiously (and, sorry, you should too. 85% of medical bills contain errors. It's criminal.)

I don't know why this promotional email caught my attention this time, and even more surprising, I acted on it. 

The basic gist of it is to eat 75% fruits and vegetables and 25% lean proteins. There's a one page list of allowed foods for phase 1, and it looked doable. And, they emphasize you can eat as much as you want, and really talk up the whole 'this is not a restrictive diet" thing. 

However, in my kickoff call with my coach, I learned there were all kinds of little caveats. Don't mix proteins at any one meal. Almonds are only for those days when you are more active than usual, and limit them to a half cup. Milk you can only have in coffee or tea.

Sounds like a restrictive diet to me, but okay, I went with it.

So, where do the Cosmic Apples come in?

My coach wanted me to eat fruit with breakfast. Every morning.

I don't eat a lot of fruit, and I'm pretty much a savory breakfast guy, if I eat it at all. But I take advice well, and I'm all in on the program so I give it a try.

"I got you some bigger apples," my wife said after the next shopping trip. 

With three growing kids in the house plus a constant small army of their friends rotating through the house, we have a basket of small apples on the counter to make sure no one of them starves, and to stretch the supply into as many hands as possible. 

About day 3, I bite into this "larger apple" and my consciousness expands. I could feel the life energy of this thing. Maybe it's what food is supposed to be like, and probably was up until the 1950s when we started manufacturing everything into boxes. 

This apple was different.

Look, I eat plenty fruits and vegetables and plenty often. But for some reason this time I was paying more attention, and probably because of all the other limitations on this supposedly non-restrictive diet, this apple stood out. So have the strawberries and blueberries. Even the tangerines are tastier.

So, yes, in part this is very much due to the fact that I'm ingesting my sugars in natural form and not, for the moment, as gummy worms or bars of chocolate.

However, when I told my wife about the experience, she revealed to me just in passing, "Those are Cosmic Crisp apples. Aren't they good?"

Apples are good. Cosmic Crisp apples are special. They're great. They stand out.

There's a lot to be concerned about in today's world, and you know them intimately so I won't even list a single one here.

However, we also have an abundance of amazing, miraculous things available to us.

Seek out a Cosmic Crisp apple. And then see what next miraculous things you can find. Give those things some attention. They deserve it.