I went to a rock 'n' roll show on Friday and discovered that two of the five scheduled bands cancelled. Apparently everyone is getting sick around town right now. This reminded me of an experiment I started a year ago. I began eating fruits and vegetables on daily basis. It's been twelve months since the project started, and I haven't been sick.

When the Department of Health upped the daily recommendation of fruits & veggies to five-a-day, I realized I ate hardly-any-a-day. A banana here, an apple there, but nothing regular. For lack of a better resolution, I vowed last year to start buying produce consistently. The main criteria was that I didn't want to prepare the food much beyond chopping lettuce.

I made simple changes when I ate out. I requested salads as a side instead of french fries. I avoided fast food, save the burrito stands and occasional Lotaburger. I won't say I always got five servings a day but at least a minimum of two. Some days, I avoided meat all together and fixed myself the big salad. The result was that my body liked the change.

I am now ten to fifteen pounds lighter than I was (depending on the time of year), and I don't get sick. I don't take any pain medication (save a black market weed outlawed by the government), I don't take aspirin (booze thins the blood just fine), and I wait until I'm hungry before I eat (three squares a day is a little excessive).

It's been pretty well documented about the benefits of fruits and veggies for centuries. An apple a day does keep the doctor away. When my throat gets scratchy, I eat an orange. When I feel stuffed and clogged, the greens flush me out. When I feel bacteria swarming in me, an onion overpowers everything.

Before this thing gets out of control as Health PSA, I still eat a variety of different foods. I've actually found an affinity for steak in the last year. I eat fatty foods, creamy foods, and sweet & salty foods. The difference is how I view them. They are now reward foods as opposed to being the mainstays.

I wish I would have had these habits when I was a kid, but sometimes you have to live a lot of life before the obvious truth hits home. As a teenager, I drank three to six cans of soda a day and frequented fast food joints. Youthful metabolism kept me spinning and buzzing without a clue. Occasionally, I would have massive headaches and trouble sleeping. I didn't understand caffeine crashes. I still get my caffeine fix in the form of coffee and tea, but I don't use it to keep me going all day. If a grande americano can't do the trick, I should probably go to sleep.

That leads us to probably the healthiest thing we can do. GO TO SLEEP. When we were little kids, people forced us to take naps. When you get older, no one tells us we've been pushing ourselves to much. We must make our own nap time. The ability to sleep is probably the best gage to let us know how well we are doing. If you can't sleep, something physical or mental is torturing you, or in the case of my elder columnist, two little boys keep him awake at all hours. No one said raising kids was good for your health.

As everyone's New Year's resolutions are crapping out, I would like to offer one more suggestion: Get natural. When you feel lousy or pain creeps up, don't pop a pill. Eat an apple. Wait a little longer before your next meal. Food taste better when you wait to eat it. Decide what food you will live on and what food is a pleasure fix. LISTEN to your body. It really lets you tells you more about your health than any doctor can.

This is only a recommendation, but changing the diet isn't that complicated. The alternative is continued sickness. Choose your own health path. No one will do it for you.

Chris Jungle is now experimenting with regular stretching with positive results.