Old lovers still full of beans

By Yeoh Siew Hoon

I was reading an article the other day that said that men who were vegetarians made better lovers. Apparently, their diets give them more stamina than their meat-eating brethren.

In fact, if you check through vegetarian websites, they make similar claims. GoVeg, for example, says that- eating meat clogs up the arteries that go to all organs, not just the heart, which means that eating meat causes impotence.

“Because pure vegetarians are about one-ninth as likely as meat-eaters to be overweight and report that they need less sleep and have more energy than meat-eaters, you will become more appealing in the bedroom,” the site adds.

This is of course a very different philosophy from that held by the Chinese who believe that you need to devour certain animal organs to be potent in the bedroom. I was having all these thoughts during the recent Police reunion concert in Singapore.

Of course, I was also there to listen to the music from a band that had not played together for more than two decades but you have to be pretty abnormal not to also admire the beauty of their frontman, Sting.

At 57, Sting looks like someone you definitely want to have a fling with. He’s fit, lean and lithe. And even from a distance, you could tell the man is positively glowing with good health.

Sting, you see, is not a regular vegetarian. He is on a strict macrobiotic diet and he has a personal chef that makes him mock tuna wraps and  soup, according to an article I read.

On tour, he travels with personal trainers who stretch and pull him in all kinds of directions to ensure he remains flexible and supple to take on the ardours of life as a celebrity who has sold hundreds of millions of albums.

After watching and drooling over Sting, I then turned out like a groupie to catch Carlos Santana in concert. Now this man is 60 but he walks about on stage like a cool, young cat on the prowl.

And he has the energy to outlast any performer half his years, playing for a solid three hours in between calling for world peace and for each of us to make a difference.

Invest in humanity, not property, he told an audience living in a city that’s made up of nothing but real estate.

Anyway, Santana also owes his good health and spirituality to a strict, vegetarian diet.

He says, “I don’t eat meat because meat brings out negative qualities such as fear, anger, anxiety, aggressiveness, etc. Vegetables peacefully offer themselves to the earth when ripe, thus allowing a sublime and peaceful thought-consciousness.

All this made me think could it be true? That vegetarians are better off, in and out of bed, than meat-eaters?

I asked my mother the question as she was plucking the feathers of another chicken that would be going into yet another pot of curry. Aiya, it’s only the rich people who can afford to be vegetarians, she dismissed my question. Poor people, we kill for meat.

I don’t think my mother meant that literally but what I think she means is when you are poor and struggling to feed hungry mouths, you don’t have time to think about what you eat ” you just need to eat.

Now I don’t personally know many vegetarians “birds of the same feather eat together and all that” but it then occurred to me that the few I know or know of are quite affluent in their own right.

In other words ” other than those who are vegetarians for religious reasons” are most people vegetarians because they can afford to be? Although they would probably argue you cannot afford not to be…

Anyway, I will let you ruminate over that while I disappear into the kitchen to whip up my Chap Goh Meh dinner which will have pork trotters on the menu” as I write this, it’s is the 15th day, the last day of the new year and the first full moon of the new year, and damn, it has to be celebrated right, Sting or Santana notwithstanding.

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