“Parippu and Potatoes are not vegetables!!!”

This was told to me in a fairly strong and exasperated tone by the lady who was sitting in front of me. She happened to be my nutritionist and this it seems is a perennial problem affecting the health of a lot more people than we would think. You see the average Sri Lankan meal to most would consist of Rice 2 curries and 1 meat item. Of course everyone knows that the 2 curries should be vegetables. But in reality they end up being parippu and potatoes which is why these two Ps piss this lady off so much. You might wonder “so what” surely vegetables are not that important. That is where we are wrong the lack of vegetables deny us of the much needed fibre and roughage which brushes out are system and it results in more cancers and cysts and illnesses in people. And when I dwell on this I realized how true what she says is. These days I having a rice and curry breakfast buying a packet from a shop and the absence of vegetables is glaring. Till now I did not know the serious repercussions of not eating proper vegetables and am going to change my eating habits as soon as I can till then can someone pass me the parippu please????