“Health is Wealth.” If you Google it, you’ll find a lot of different search results. It’s a very popular saying. I might have remembered it this morning due to working in the natural foods industry for many years. I remember it back in the 1980’s. So it might have been a product name or a restaurant or who knows.

I just know the older I get, the more that phrase really means something. There’s another old saying, “time is money,” and the two go hand in hand. If you’re spending your hard-earned time (and let me tell you, living on Earth can sometimes be considered “hard earned time”) trying to be healthy—or rather, dealing with health issues, then “health is wealth” really hits home.

I remember my mom being concerned with “health food” back in the mid 1970’s–that’s what they called it. “Health food.” I remember the Tiger’s Milk bars, one of the first real popular healthy bar made with protein powder and peanut butter and chocolate and packed with vitamins. At least that’s the way I remember it. I’m not sure what was in it, actually. But it was definitely chocolate-coated. Or carob-coated. Carob from the carob bean was a big thing in the 70’s and 80’s. A chocolate substitute. Probably doesn’t have the caffeine that chocolate has. I don’t hear much about carob anymore.

I think people wised up and realized carob doesn’t taste as good as chocolate. At some point, taste is wealth, too.

Health is wealth has become a major theme in my life lately. The older I get (and I do keep getting older) the more I’m glad I know how to eat healthy. And when I don’t eat as healthy as I should, I know how to bend my body back into some form of healthy alignment. That’s a good way of saying it. Being aligned “healthily.”

Realizing how important your time is, and if you’re spending it dealing with health issues, going to the doctor, the hospital, feeling bad, out of energy, body can’t do what you want and need it to do, this can seriously foul up your plans for living a good healthy, rich life.

What does this all mean? Sometimes, people can be healthy eating just about anything, really. There’s 100-year-old women and men swearing their daily Coke and beef jerky ritual is keeping them healthy.

There’s people in Italy who seem healthy and they eat a lot of salty cured meats—prosciutto, bologna, salami, pepperoni, ham—and a ton of cheese—mozzarella, parmesan…and a lot of coffee gets downed in that equation too. They seem healthy.

Sometimes I have no idea what keeps people healthy. They say a positive attitude is the #1 ingredient in keeping people healthy. Maybe so.

It’s probably not good to sit around and be angry all the time. Or worry incessantly. Or fret and be anxious. I’m sure anxiety is a #1 cause of some health issues.

And then there’s drugs, pharmaceuticals, designed to keep you healthy. Rather, they’re brought in by the big companies to help you deal with not being healthy. I think there’s a lot of people somewhere behind a curtain that are very concerned with keeping you unhealthy. They make a lot of money with the business of being unhealthy.

So they don’t mind if you drink soda and eat potato chips for breakfast and you’re depressed and you worry about all the things they shove into your being on the evening news. They love it. You’re a prime customer.

Heart disease. High blood pressure. High cholesterol. Anxiety. Sleep trouble. Trouble going to the bathroom. Can’t walk. Can’t breathe.

They’ve got a whole phalanx of remedies. And if you can’t afford them, there’s all sorts of plans to help you get healthy—with their assistance, of course.

But somehow, I don’t think that’s the ultimate cure. And I’m not saying what is commonly known as Western medicine and drugs don’t have their place. I’ve used them and I know others who have benefitted greatly from the right drug for their health issues.

I’m just saying health is much deeper than a pill or a carob-coated candy bar masquerading as a healthy alternative to a Snicker’s bar.

It’s got to be.

But it’s important to find out those foods and combinations of foods that work for your body. I can’t eat Italian submarine sandwiches and ice cream cones day after day as my main fare.

I know how my body feels.

And I know how much salt and fat and sugar and preservatives I’m ingesting with this kind of diet.

And I know, with some certainty, that if I eat that way all the time, shoving fat and salt and chemicals and cured meats into my body all the time, my body might not be too happy.

But now I’m bored. And maybe you are too. We all like what we like. We’re all here for a short while. And maybe we just want to eat what the hell we want as we get through this amusement park ride called “life.”

And I guarantee you, when I go to Italy for the first time, I’ll be eating a lot of cured meats, cheese, Italian pastries, espresso and whatever else I find on the trip.

Big fat delicious slices of pizza. Gelato. Cannolis and Napoleons and fresh-baked Italian cookies from some little bakery on a cobblestone street in some ancient Italian town on a hill.

Then I’ll go home and have a glass of warm lemon water.