An ironic gift from my late parents is that I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I very definitely have a salt tooth. It’s not that I put a lot of salt on foods, so much as that the foods I enjoy most are salty instead of sweet. I am relatively indifferent, for example, to chocolate, but a plate of fresh-sliced and salted tomatoes makes me lose control. I don’t know why this came about, other than maybe it is simply my biology. My mom actually used to salt her salads.

The bitter pill to swallow about this is twofold: I don’t eat a lot of simple sugars, and have been fairly thin all my life. At the same time, though, I have hypertension, just like my mom and dad did. I take Diovan every day, and that has it under control.

There is good news. If I had to name my favorite food, it would be fresh fruit, and often the fruits that are not all that sweet. I like Gala apples and cantaloupe, for example, but I am not crazy about bananas. Fresh blueberries taste amazing to me.

Dinner tonight? Toothpaste.