Eat Dessert First – Lewandowski does!

By Shlomo Maital  

Robert Lewandowski

      Last year, when we hosted a gaggle of grandchildren for our own summer camp, I announced a new political party, just for fun. (We had 39 !!! in our last election). In Israel, each political party has one to three Hebrew letters on its ballot.  Mine was the letters ק ק   kuf kuf – in Hebrew, standing for “dessert first”.  Eat dessert first.  What’s the point of making delicious pies, ice cream, cake… if you’re too stuffed to eat it?  So – start with dessert.  That our  vision statement.

      My granddaughter, who turned 8, grabbed the idea and ran with it.   She rounded up the other kids and took off with the idea. She set up a headquarters upstairs, and cranked out membership cards and posters.  And now, from time to time, we really do practice ‘kuf kuf’  (kinuach kodem, in Hebrew),  dessert first.

      So imagine my delight, to read New York Times soccer journalist Rory Smith’s great piece about Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski, a Polish late-bloomer who is now 32 and is a fearsome goal machine, about to beat Gerd Muller’s record for career goals. 

      Lewandowski has become an honorary member of ‘eat dessert first’.   Here is how Smith describes it:

Now — thanks in part to the expertise of his wife, Anna, a nutritionist — Lewandowski, semifamously, eats his meals in what is generally accepted to be the wrong order. “If I have time to have dessert, I prefer to eat it an hour or so before lunch,” he said. “I don’t always eat it, but if I do, I try to have a distance between carbohydrates and protein.”

Look —  distance, shmistance (between carbs and proteins) —  I’ll take it anyway. If it helps Lewandowski become a fearsome goal machine for his team, even at age 32,  and if eating dessert first makes everybody really happy —   hey, vote for it!  

    My claim is this:  If it makes you happy,  then (in moderation) it helps keep you healthy.   Because stress and worry are really bad for your health, more so than a few carbs or spoons of ice cream. 

     Some day, drop in and try my homemade vanilla ice cream.  Before dinner. 

 d