Sometimes it's all in the bread

Editor's note:Joe Sullivan is on vacation. This column was originally published May 10, 2002.

The last two times my wife and I have taken vacations, I've managed to lose a couple pounds.

I attribute the weight loss to two factors:

1. We go places that require lots of walking.

2. The bread diet.

Since 1972, my wife and I have been going to the same little town on the Oregon coast for vacations. It is like a second home to us. But in the last two or three years, we've become bold, adventurous and daring. We've taken vacations to spots we've never been before.

And when we go someplace new and different, we feel compelled to soak up as much of the local sights, culture and fun as possible.

This means walking.

And more walking.

We get quite a workout.

At home, we're just like you. If we have to get from Point A to Point B, we look for the car keys.

So the experts are right when they say regular exercise is good for you and will promote weight loss. All those years of pooh-poohing the get-fit crowd, I have to admit there's something to it. Of course, I'm still trying to figure out if pulling the lever to raise my feet on my La-Z-Boy is cardiovascular or pulmonary exercise.

While walking on vacation makes us exercise more than we ever would at home, it is only part of the equation. The other part is eating.

There are, as I see it, two gastronomic paths you can take while on vacation:

Path No. 1: Convince yourself that the local food is so unusual and different from what you eat at home that you are duty-bound to sample as much of it as possible.

Path No. 2: Enjoy the bread.

Here's what I know about bread. It's made from flour and water, and it has to bake.

I don't know what, exactly has happened to bread in America. The old saying "better than sliced bread" is supposed to convey that something is better than ordinary. But we are a sliced-bread nation. We settle for white bread dispensed in neat slices. Sometimes we think it's healthier to go for 100 percent whole wheat.

In other countries, bread comes in loaves, not slices. And it comes in so many varieties that it would be impossible to sample every type of loaf unless you can take several months of vacation at a time. Or retire.

Because the bread is so good, it tends to fill you up, especially if you're washing it down with strong coffee laced with steamed milk and real sugar. As a matter of fact, I believe a well-thought-out diet of coffee from North African beans and bread baked almost anywhere on the European continent is probably what Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden. If Eve hadn't been snookered by that snake, we'd probably all be bakers and Starbucks owners right now.

One day during our most recent vacation, we wandered the streets of a retail district to see how people shopped, what they liked and what made them turn up their noses.

Outside one bakery, two women were engaged in friendly chit-chat. They each were holding smallish loaves of bread wrapped in paper and were tearing off bite-size pieces and popping them into their mouths as they talked.

We stepped inside to check it out. Near the cash register I spied a basket of small loaves. The handwritten note was simple: Mthode ancien. Old-fashioned. So we bought a loaf. It was still warm. It was unbelievably good.

"Breaking bread" conjures up all kinds of memories and associations if the bread has just been baked and hasn't been sliced. Maybe it has something to do with breaking instead of cutting. Maybe it has to do with being on vacation.

Eat bread. Walk lots. Live long.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.