OK -- maybe just a tiny bit of dessert; just a smidge

There once was a time when three a.m. called for a few slices or more of ultra-spiced pepperoni pizza following a festive evening of consuming considerable quantities of beer. Today, that same scary hour of the night is compelling me to rummage in the darkness of the night table in search of the hiding Rolaids bottle because I had dared to have raw onion on my hamburger at the barbecue earlier in the evening.

You all know what wee small hours heartburn feels like -- it feels ominous and maybe lethal. You imagine the all major signs of an impending coronary feel exactly the same. A coronary of the sort that is known as 'the big one'. The one that’s going to take you out, just like the one that killed your colleague Ralph -- who was two years your junior, the previous year -- but, probably it’s just heartburn.

Nevertheless, the heartburn warns that you must learn to be prudent in your eating habits. As everything in your life changes through your middle years, so does your relationship with food. What you put in your mouth may seem like a trivial consideration, but it ‘s not. It's a reality that terrible eating habits kill a bunch of us every year and also contribute to a many chronic health problems, that range from obesity to arteriosclerosis to diabetes. Any refusal to temper the way we nosh is, as with so many elements of aging, yet another form of middle age denial.

Men are more adept at denial than are women, especially when it comes to our relationship with our physiognomies. A woman, no matter what she looks like, thinks she has gone to seed, and is chronically resolving to bring about some changes. You look at your lady and see (with pleasure) a rear and tummy that seem tight, and breasts that would shame females a decade younger. Even if such a Madonna bod is not exactly the case, that’s what you tell her because you still adore having intimate encounters with this person, so no reason to piss her off. Really, though, what you say doesn’t matter. She looks at that same body in the mirror and sees Ma Kettle on a bad day.

A man, on the other hand, a man can scope out his body in the mirror andeven if he's built like a sumo wrestler, he'll nod in approval and utter, "Looking good, dude." What's more, he'll believe it. Yeah, maybe a little extra avoirdupois around the middle, but don't most guys have to buy new belts periodically because they've run out of holes on the old one?

As men's relationship with their bodies is different from women's, so is their relationship with food. Eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, while not unheard of in males, are much less common than they are in women. Likewise the majority of vegetarians and vegans are female. Sometimes males are forced to go along with such faddism if they live in a household crawling with nutrition-angst-obsessive females, but the general masculine need for sustenance involves something of the meat persuasion.

Males develop their strongest affection with food in adolescence. Many teen boys sport tans throughout the winter due to their tendency to stand and gaze longingly into the refrigerator with the light glaring in their faces while they seek out the voluminous quantities of those fabulous foods that never seem to actually exist in the home icebox. Those foods only live in fast-food emporia, and that’s why adolescent males are so cherished by McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and the like. While girls may frequent these eateries as often as boys, they don't consume the mammoth volume in burgers, shakes, fries, and onion rings that the lads do. Boys are mouth at one end, gut in the middle, and alimentary canal and ejection port down below. Teen girls, already obsessed with looking like Paris Hilton, guzzle diet colas, and then step outside to smoke. Smoking is good for for losing weight, so they believe. Start smoking at age fifteen and continue over the next few decades, and eventually you’ll lose every single bit of your weight much sooner than you’d anticipated.

Back to the boys. Any foodstuff is fair game for the male, and no apparent discomfort seems to ensue regardless of what is tucked away. Heartburn and dyspepsia are long in the future. Also, since the majority of males are still in growth-spurt mode when their appetites are at their greatest, they don't really put on girth of the paunch sort. They build up bulk but generally don't get slobbish.Then it all changes. Very rapidly. The first twinges of heartburn awaken at night. Certain substances begin to have the same effect as a trip to Mexico on a tourist. The middle becomes thicker, and thicker to the degree that maybe even the 'D-word', formerly restricted exclusively to females, enters the consciousness.

An actual diet likely won't be acted upon at this juncture, but it has become a consideration for future reference. It falls into that generalized ‘soon’ category that also applies to: quitting smoking, cutting back on drinking, exercising more, and going for a medical check-up. “Soon, hon’. I promise.”

Another vicious change in a man's relationship with sustenance is that he finally in his middle years learns to appreciate certain gourmet delights. Burgers and fries, or even steak and baked potato aren't the only items to be savored during our passage on earth. There are the ethnic cuisines of Europe and Asia. There are menu items he has only read about, or heard his wife talk about.

Furthermore, as his taste buds diminish in discriminatory powers with thepassage of time our boy wants his food to be spicier. Curries and Cajun become irresistible. But with the curries, for example (the hotter the better, no doubt) comes the other side of the scimitar. There are the calories in the meals; and the distress. Curry, our subject learns, is just as hot coming out as it was going in, leaving the sufferer in some situations with a bad case of 'Bengali Bum' as a result of the brutal passage of assorted blends of cloves, garlic, fenugreek and all the other savory stuff that goes into the mix.

And then there are desserts. They have always been my particular downfall. Skip the entrée stuff and get to the sweet works fine for me. I have delighted in many fantastic concoctions as time has gone by. While some have delightful dreams about sexual encounters, I have them about Pavolova or Crème Brulee. OK, I have the dirty dreams, too, but a good dessert dream can be just about as arousing.

However, I have had to learn to accept the path of moderation. Unlike the recovering alcoholic who must choose abstention, I have found that a little bit of dessert can still delight, and still maintain the waistline. For me my self-discipline in the pudding realm is not so much strength of character as vanity. Do I want to consume the entire bowl of chocolate mousse, or do I want to look dazzling? Well, OK, tolerable at least.

So, can I say that men’s relationship with food gets better as we get older?Yes, probably the relationship does, but the ingesting of it (in all itsramifications) gets worse, far worse.Sorry, I didn't ever suggest that getting older was better --just different.