Somehow, I Don't Believe You

My parents employed several different tricks to get us to eat certain parts of food when we were kids. We were told to eat our potato skins "because that's where the vitamins are." That's the same reason we were given to eat our bread crusts and shrimp tails. "It's good for you," my mom would say. "It's roughage." To this day, I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't know what roughage is. If it's hard and tastes bad and is practically inedible, then it's roughage. Apparently, all the vitamins in an orange are really in the peel. Since I always base everything I eat on whether or not it has vitamins in it, I guess I've really been missing out by eating the juicy, sweet, flavorful part of an orange instead. Same with broccoli stalks, peanut shells, plum pits, pizza crusts, apple cores, Chipotle tortillas, and cereal boxes. We're missing out, people! We're not getting the nutrition, not to mention the roughage, that we so desperately need.