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For the past four nights Ryan had dessert for dinner, and he knew he shouldn’t do it again. Something about being an adult and on his own for the first time in his young life screamed poor impulse control, and he wanted to live out his childhood dreams of eating ice cream and cookies for the rest of his life. But he also wanted to be healthy, look attractive so that Sarah, his classmate in chemistry, would say ‘yes’ to his request to grab a cup of coffee. And most of all, Ryan didn’t want his roommates to rag on him about being an adult child that couldn’t properly feed himself as he had so adequately portrayed his poor choices in nutrition. What made it worse was that his best friend from freshman year and roommate whom he respected the most also happened to be majoring in nutrition.

But sadly, though, Ryan had no idea how to cook. He never knew how his food arrived on his plate fully cooked and ready to digest. As far as he knew, it was pure magic. So, being a crafty student of the internet, Ryan looked up simple, easy-to-perform recipes that he could afford.

“Is that what you’re eating?” his roommate asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re eating ramen covered in chocolate syrup. That’s disgusting, Ryan. I don’t know why you would do that to your body.”

“You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

The smell of the ramen as it cooked in the pot with the chocolate syrup mixing into the sodium-laced noodles gave off a pungent, indescribable odor that was closely akin to what he smelled in a gym’s locker room right before everyone went to shower. It didn’t taste all that bad, despite his roommate’s protestations. It did, however, end up giving him digestive issues for the rest of the night, and made his stomach feel like it went through a blender. 

“You know, you only have about a few more years of being able to eat like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, eventually eating like shit will catch up to you and your metabolism isn’t going to be able to filter out all the bad crap you put into it and that’s when you’re going to really start feeling it.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

Ryan dreaded the thought of having to come up with meal plans for the next night, much less for the rest of his life. He realized that his life would be consumed by the anxiety of figuring out what to eat. Every single day, at least three times per day, though twice if he chose to forgo dealing with breakfast outside of a quick cup of coffee, which he did regularly. So, right before he entered into graduate school, Ryan decided the easiest thing for him to do would be to take out the guesswork of what he would eat. Each night he would eat either one of two meals. He’d either eat grilled cheese or hotdogs with a side of broccoli for every single meal.