I’ve never really been a fan of fruit, and I’m not terribly good at getting fresh...

I’ve never really been a fan of fruit, and I’m not terribly good at getting fresh vegetables, either. I took vitamin C supplements as a kid (I once had a friend over and told them ‘this is a candy called vitamin C’. What? They’re orange flavoured and delicious!) My mom always told me I’d get scurvy. 

So I did. 

Of course, I knew all the symptoms because she had told me them. So when I was seventeen and a scar I’ve had since I was two suddenly scabbed over and started bleeding…I ran to the store and grabbed a jug of juice and drank that baby in one go. Gave myself a good scare, but luckily scurvy’s pretty much the easiest thing to cure. And having scurvy makes a great story! (Though there have been two people who absolutely, flat-out refused to believe me). 

I also had a weird vitamin C deficiency eye thing one Christmas break that had me convinced I had an eye tumor or something (I’m kind of a hypochondriac). 

The interesting thing (as if scurvy weren’t interesting enough!) is that, since then, I’ve been much more in tune with my body’s needs. Either it’s yelling more loudly or I’m paying more attention, but now I can tell when I need fresh fruits or vegetables. 

So…yay?

Interesting fact about vitamin C: besides humans, guinea pigs are one of the few animals that don’t synthesize their own vitamin C, and need to get it from their diet or supplements. I always made sure my piggies had vitamin C…but not me…