Chicory, Belgian Endives And Me

When I was little, my Grandfather-of-Blessed-Memory (maternal) came to visit us at 6 am every Sunday morning, arising very early to drive about two hours from Springfield to our Boston suburb of Chelsea.

Springfield would be considered “way out west” as compared to civilized and urbanized Boston, so it is like the country mouse coming to the big city.

He said the road was not busy and drive was relaxing and pleasant for him. But his visits were anything  but relaxing and pleasant for us, who would much rather have tried to sleep in on Sunday.

The exception was my paternal Grandmother-of-Blessed-Memory – who was also an early riser. Older folks often seem to get up early.

(That’s how I know I’m not old yet – I still love to sleep late). These two senior members of our family seemed to get along well.  Grandfather called her “Mother Goldstein,” and even brought her a nice bottle of (coincidentally named) “Mother Goldstein” brand kosher wine. There was one incident that I recall that upset a peaceful Sunday morning when I was about five. I came downstairs in my best baby blue lace dress to hear Grandfather yelling at Grandmother never to serve him that “horrible drink” again.

Grandmother had offered him a cup of chicory – a coffee substitute used the world over for many, many years.

He wanted her to make “plain coffee,” and said he would be more than happy to wait. Grandmother loved hot chicory drink, as did my father.  My mother and her father hated it. I remember trying some a bit later, telling my mom it needed more sweetener. When my brother tried it, he basically did a spit-take and asked that he never again be presented with the drink. He wasn’t. Fast forward about fifteen years to my first year of medical school in France.  I roomed upstairs over a small, cozy café, and mainly because of proximity, I worked as a serving girl there to finance my education.

Mme. Mareschal, the owner, took me under her wing —  basically she “adopted” me, and watched out for me and taught me about the ways of this strange land so far from my home.

It was she who fed me my first Belgian endive salad and I loved it at first taste.  Bodaceous, not like the American tomato and iceberg lettuce pile of produce, my mother thought you had to eat every day.

The American salad has some drawbacks. For one, iceberg lettuce is the most nutritionally vacant entity on the planet, eaten only by dieters searching for an equivalent to nothing. But more importantly, tomatoes are from the nightshade family and can have dire consequences for some who are sensitive to such things.

People such as me.

I have since learned that nightshades (which include eggplant and potatoes) were responsible for arthritic pain in my knees.  I now have no nightshades in my diet, and – even better – no pain in my knees.

Although it has a hint of a bitter taste, my love affair with the Belgian endive salad course lasted most of medical school.  I was told it was good for my health and it certainly made me feel good. And now for the twist ending —

Belgian endive and chicory are the same plant.  Its nutritional riches are many, as described above. The chicory plant my grandmother of blessed memory described was big with dark leaves and easy to grow.  Believe me, if it was not easy to grow, she would not have grown it (or anything like it) in rural Ukraine. I had heard a lot of Belgian jokes in northern France, the way people anywhere in the world make jokes about their neighbors. The story goes that some Belgian farmer left chicory roots in a damp cellar and the resultant vegetable was the endive. When I saw some in Trader Joe’s, my memories triggered a craving, and I am now eating them regularly and find them strangely delightful.

Here is my hypothesis:
When someone needs to lose weight — a lot of weight like I did — I tell them to figure out what their relatives ate a couple of generations ago (especially before immigrating to America), and to try to replicate that diet.

It worked for me to lose half my body weight.  It makes sense. People who come to this country gain weight and their thyroids slow down and they get type II diabetes.  I believe this to be a basic truth and it is the basis of my recent book – This Is NOT A Diet Book. I do not know what enzymes metabolize what and I am not going to let people die from illnesses caused by and complicated by obesity.

As Betty Boop answered when The Old Man Of The Mountain asked her what she was going to do –

“The best I can.” Maybe, just maybe, there is something genetic going on in this microcosm, this family of Jewish Ukrainian origin that ended up with me. My mother, her father, and my brother, could not tolerate chicory. I thought it was “not too bad,” while my father and his mother loved it. Granted, I never drank enough of the beverage to attribute any long range sense of well-being to it. I don’t drink coffee either.  I’m not one who needs a “morning lift.” However I will try chicory drink again if I see it anywhere. But all these years later, not just in medical school in northern France but this day in southern California, I get a strange sense of well-being from what I did not even know was the same plant.

Maybe grandmother of blessed memory, father of blessed memory, and I have some kind of enzymatic metabolic thing that makes you love chicory/endives.   We share things like a weak pancreas, a good musical ear, lots of stuff. It is no more than the most indirect evidence, granted, but I really think that genetics decree our chemical abilities to process food, and that when the addictive additives of processed food are stripped away, and we figure out what our forbears ate, normal weight and better health will be easy, truly easy.

(NOTE – I have started an online weight loss support group and anyone can sign up for free.  I send out email tips and will soon be holding teleseminars and conferences to help people who have their own weight and health challenges.)