Eat Your Vegetables / Super Salad: The Healthy Holdouts

Lyrics

[Intro]
Some days, all you wanted was a clean start.
A plate.
A promise.
A quiet kind of art.

[Verse 1]
Nineteen seventy-eight, on Briarcliff Road.
Before the word 'wellness' carried such a load.
Just Eat Your Vegetables. A simple command.
Wooden tables, a flyer in your hand
for a yoga class or a poetry night.
The steam from the hot bar in the afternoon light.
Lentil soup and the smell of baked bread.
Every good intention that lived in my head.

[Chorus]
And the long cold bar was a confession booth.
A search for some small, edible truth.
The stainless steel tongs, cool in my palm.
A little bit of chaos, a little bit of calm.
Building a mountain of sprouts and seeds,
planting a flag for my body's needs.

[Verse 2]
Then the bright greenhouse came to Roswell Road.
Super Salad, a lighter episode.
All that glass and the hanging ferns.
The same ritual, with different concerns.
Could you be good? Could you resist
the bacon crumbles in a happy fist?
The thick blue cheese, a river of sin,
right next to the virtuous shredded courgette within.

[Chorus]
And the long cold bar was a confession booth.
A search for some bright, commercial truth.
The plastic tongs, light in my palm.
A little bit of virtue, a little bit of qualm.
Building a mountain of sprouts and seeds,
ignoring the whisper of my body's greeds.

[Bridge]
From a tempeh Reuben to a pile of cheese...
We were just trying to find some ease.
Then Emory Village grew quiet, two thousand and five.
Just another ghost trying to stay alive.
A memory of a choice, on a plate, for a price.
Trying to be healthy. Trying to be nice
to ourselves.

[Outro]
Just the clink of metal on a ceramic rim.
A clean start.
A passing whim.