Andy Rooney Says "Eat More Bran!"

I don't know whether you're like me or not but I've been ignoring advice on how to take care of my body since I was about 12. That was when a dentist my mother took me to told me to brush my teeth twice a day. Well, I never brush my teeth twice a day unless I forget I already brushed them once before.

It's not that I'm disrespectful of doctors and dentists or that I believe what they're telling me is wrong. It's just that, frankly, at my age I don't have a lot of time to devote to trying to live forever with all my teeth.

Actually, there's more advice available on how to stay healthy than most of us have time to take. A week seldom goes by that you don't read something new.

A staff of researchers one week say that there's a link to cancer from using your cell phone. The next week there's another study on cell phone usage and the researchers find that cell phones give you a headache. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that cell phones make you hungry.

The last time I went to the doctor he asked me if I ate bran for breakfast. I told him I didn't eat anything that tastes like cardboard for breakfast. He told me "try eating bran and lose some weight". I mean he spent four years in medical school to advise me to lose weight?

In the past couple of years I've worried that the shoes I'm wearing may be affecting my posture, that the coffee I drink is affecting my pancreas, that the butter I put on everything is clogging my arteries and that the drink of bourbon I have before dinner every night may be killing what brain cells I have left.

Actually I've made a compromise with doctors: I take their advice when I like it and I reject their advice when I don't. It's got nothing to do with lifestyle because, to tell you the truth, there's very little style in my life.

So, the next time my doctors asks if I'm eating bran, I'm going to tell him I do. I eat bran sprinkled over a big dish of vanilla ice cream.

Written by Andy Rooney