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The sad leftovers on those grocery store shelves

In a time of unprecedented crisis, we’ve shown we’re willing to do anything to survive so long as you don’t make us eat a plant-based diet. Sure, supermarkets are emptied daily of toilet paper and chicken cutlets, but there are more flax seeds in Aisle 7 than there are grains of sand on Earth right now.

Chocolate hummus

Look. Either be chocolate or be hummus, you don’t get to be both. I didn’t even know this existed prior to this photo, and think we should leave it in the pre-pandemic world.

Plant-based protein

Look, my plants are my closest friends right now, so I guess I would be reluctant to eat those too.

Hawaiian pizza

Loose translation: Even at the height of panic, humans know how to keep it together. Pineapple on pizza—so polarizing. Like mushrooms or politicians.

Corona (the beer)

Imagine being the CEO of Corona beer and being like wait, the what virus?

Manhattan Clam Chowder

https://twitter.com/HillaryMonahan/status/1239575233918615553

Honestly, they’re right to do it. Let’s be careful with the use of the word “plague” though.

Check out 13 popular foods people hated eating 100 years ago.

Unsalted potato chips

Girl, not even on my darkest day. Not even at my lowest point. Not even under quarantine. I would eat astronaut food first.

These 20 funny Google searches will make you wonder who’s asking these questions, anyway.

Cinnamon raisin bagels

I would eat the cinnamon raisin bagels… Might not even slice and butter them. I’d just bite into them like an apple.

Gluten-free bread

Honestly, good! Leave it for the gluten-free people. They’re not eating gluten-free bread because they enjoy it!

Cauliflower pizza crust

If you ever try to tell me that you can substitute cauliflower for something that’s not another piece of cauliflower and it tastes the same, your credibility flies out the window like a paper napkin on the highway to hell.

Shrimp ramen

The chicken ramen, however, is a delicacy. I would trade three barrels of oil for one cup o’ chicken noodles.

Hot dogs

Hot dogs, when boiled in the questionable water of a pull-away street cart at an amusement park, baseball game, or simply the sidewalk, are a delicacy. Since you would be subjected to preparing these in your home right now without those elite conditions, this actually makes sense to me.

These funny tweets about food are sure to make you grin.

Peeps cereal

Sometimes you have to wonder how some product launches ever made it past the pitch meeting. Would you believe these foods were invented by accident?

coronavirus masks illustration

The truth about COVID-19

While it’s true that the ever-growing coronavirus pandemic seems to be most deadly for older adults and those with underlying health conditions, anyone can contract it, exhibit serious symptoms, and spread it to others. Even with all of the new physical distancing norms and cultural shifts, no age group or demographic is immune to the virus. I learned that the hard way when my own friend died from coronavirus complications. He wasn’t who you might expect—he was a bright, funny 34-year-old man with a normal, vibrant life and a mild history of childhood asthma and bronchitis. It didn’t stop with Jeff, though. In the last few days alone, I’ve heard from dozens of friends, colleagues, and family members across the U.S. who have also contracted coronavirus. Here’s what they want you to know.

It’s more contagious than you can imagine

“People do not understand how contagious this is,” shares Jacquie Rosshandler of New York, the hardest-hit region in the U.S. The 38-year-old entrepreneur and mother of two attended an event on March 10, which is where she contracted the virus. “My husband and I made a promise to ourselves not to touch anyone, thinking this would protect us. In fact, we promised to go into isolation, and this was going to be our last social event,” she says. “It also happened to be the social event that did us in.”

Rosshandler, her husband, and several other guests have fallen seriously ill and tested positive for coronavirus. During the incubation period, those infected at the event Rosshandler attended continued to move about New York, and some even travelled internationally.

She went to explain that the sickness has been brutal. “We are both very athletic, eat well, don’t eat meat, and are in very good health,” she explains. “[But] the headaches for me lasted four days and were quite painful. Tylenol didn’t help at all.” Her husband suffered severe fever and sweating episodes, and he is still sweating through clothes and bed sheets regularly after 10 days.

Rosshandler hopes that more people will be proactive about flattening the curve. “Isolate yourself for the good of yourself and the entire community,” she says. “Stop waiting for other people to tell you to do so.”

The exhaustion is “paralyzing”

Like Jeff, Monique P. went to Disney World in early March, and it’s the only place she can imagine having contracted the coronavirus.

“The first symptoms I felt came all at the same minute,” the 35-year-old mother from Brooklyn, New York, says. “I was practically paralyzed with exhaustion, and I had a fever and sore throat. My first thought was: I feel like I was hit by a train. My doctor didn’t believe it was the coronavirus. I was tested for strep and the flu, but both swabs came back negative.”

Her 38.3-degree Celsius fever persisted, and on day three, she started experiencing pain behind her eyes and in her sinuses. The following day, Monique took a coronavirus test, and by then, she had lost her senses of smell and taste. On day five, she developed heart palpitations, tingling skin, the feeling of something crawling on her, a burning sensation in her nose, and a cough. On day 11, she was still weak, fatigued, and only able to taste salt.

She’s optimistic, though, about how society will change once this pandemic has passed. “I think people will be kinder from this,” she says. “You can’t go through a trauma and come out the same.”

Early symptoms are often gastrointestinal

Chayim B. Alevsky, a 52-year-old rabbi from Manhattan, couldn’t imagine that he and his 10-year-old daughter had contracted coronavirus when they began vomiting after intense nausea that lasted several days. But that’s exactly what had happened. Nausea led to sweating episodes so severe that multiple layers of clothes were left drenched. “My daughter noted a feeling of tightness in her chest, but neither of us had a sore throat or cough,” he says, although the stomach-related symptoms of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and food aversions persisted somewhat severely.

Despite their ordeal, he’s looking toward the future with hope. “We see that something almost invisible—a virus—can affect the world with such speed, and I’m hoping we can use that concept to spread kindness at the same rate,” he says.

The virus tricks you into thinking you’re OK

coronavirus worksheet

While some people can’t pinpoint their source of contagion, others know exactly who gave them coronavirus. Jenny Cotie Kangas, a 33-year-old woman from Apple Valley, Minnesota, believes she contracted COVID-19 from a co-worker, though she hasn’t been officially diagnosed. “We don’t have testing in Minnesota. You can only get tested if you are in critical condition in the hospital,” she says. “So we have an entire population of people who are sick—but not counted.”

“I’m on day five now, which has been the worst yet,” she says of her ongoing illness, which her doctor believes is a presumed positive case based on her exposure and symptoms. “I check my own oxygen stats and record them along with my temperature every day. In the event that I have to go to the hospital, I can share this information with them, but [it also helps me] recognize when my symptoms are changing. The virus is a roller coaster, and it tricks you into thinking you’re better when you aren’t.”

Kangas, who is a single mother, has her kids staying with her ex-husband as she recovers. She says she understands the importance of isolation and steering clear of others given the extremely contagious nature of COVID-19. While battling this illness has been tough, she is grateful for her support system. “I have family calling to check on me. I have an ex-husband dropping off cooked meals at my door since I’m too weak to cook—and he has my three kids while I’m sick,” she says. “I’m scared for the people who don’t have that support. Just being on your own for this long is hard, let alone being sick.”

The dry cough is often accompanied by uncontrollable sweating

coronavirus mask treatment
Nadia Ackerman being treated for the coronavirus

Nadia Ackerman, an artist from New York better known as “Natchi,” was at the same event in early March as Rosshandler. All nine people at their table that night fell ill within days, and three have taken coronavirus tests that gave way to positive results.

“It felt like someone was punching me on the inside—like I had been kicked by a horse,” the 45-year-old says of her coughing attacks, ongoing fever, scratchy sore throat, extreme malaise, and exhaustion. “Then nausea hit me hard on day four. I have zero appetite, and I lost my sense of taste and then smell. I still don’t have them back.” The headaches come and go relentlessly, and Ackerman describes them as “a million times worse than a migraine.”

After several days of battling coronavirus on her own, she made the decision to call for help. “I spent four days in bed thinking it would pass soon. Everyone was telling me I was young and strong and I’ll be fine. I wasn’t fine,” she says. “The fifth day, I woke up to take a sip of water that was immediately met by vomiting and diarrhea. I called 911 and an ambulance took me to the emergency room, where I was treated for severe dehydration, nausea, and headache as a result of the coronavirus.”

She wants people to know that even the healthiest 45-year-old person, who does yoga and leads a vegan lifestyle with no preexisting health condition and educated attitudes about health, can easily contract and suffer from coronavirus. “The thing about this virus is that it comes and goes in waves,” she explains. “Stay home. It’s not only about ourselves but [for] other people, and we should have acted earlier.”

Those who are already ill should be extra mindful

Christina T., who was supposed to start chemotherapy treatments this month, was frightened to learn that a close family member was sick with coronavirus. “They had to postpone my chemo start date because of all of this,” the River Vale, New Jersey, wife and mother says of her community’s overwhelmed health care system.

The 35-year-old says her family member’s coronavirus symptoms consist of a dry cough and more. “He’s a three-year cancer survivor himself and has had shortness of breath and a dry cough,” she explains. “They did a flu test, which came back negative, so they sent him home. The following day, he ran a fever and went to local urgent care for a coronavirus test. “Those results and the accompanying chest X-rays took days to register. Nearly a week later, with his fever ranging from 99 to 102 every day, the results came back positive. Ongoing fever is one of the telltale signs of something more serious, especially if you’re living in an area inundated with coronavirus cases.

“He says the toughest part is taking a deep breath in because it induces a painful cough,” she says, but there’s not much they can do for her family member. “His doctor’s recommendation is to stay away from the emergency room unless he can’t breathe.”

Expect shortness of breath

Even if your symptoms aren’t as severe as others, you still need to take them seriously. Taylor B., a 32-year-old woman from New York, has had only mild symptoms for about two weeks. However, it doesn’t mean her experience has been a walk in the park. “Right now, I have mild symptoms. The shortness of breath is scary—and trying to calm myself down while living in a small studio apartment is a real challenge some days,” she says. “My symptoms haven’t elevated, so I haven’t reached out to medical staff.”

It can last several weeks—and you’ll need to fight

Jason Hasty, 54, is an attorney from Augusta, Georgia, who has been openly chronicling his own coronavirus journey because of his public candidacy for district attorney. On day 11 of his quarantine, his symptoms are still going strong.

“I woke up this morning alone again,” he posted on social media. “The first thought was where am I? What day is it? And then that heavy, restricted feeling hit me in my chest and then I remembered. I remembered what my new normal is. Staring at these four walls as I am in my quarantined bedroom.”

His posts, which have garnered a lot of local attention, offer a stark look into the emotional ups and downs of the coronavirus, as well as the physical toll it takes. And he has an important message for anyone who finds themselves in this situation: “You just fight. You get up every day and you take your medicine and your vitamins and you pray you are going to make it. You start screaming from the mountaintops to save anyone you can. Don’t just go home to die. Fight. You have to fight to get well. You have to beg for health care. You have to plead and argue. This is no time to be nice and timid.”

For more information on COVID-19, see our comprehensive coronavirus guide.

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The founders of Thrive for Good stand at their kitchen counter.
Dale and Linda Bolton at home in Thornhill, Ont.

Planting the seed

Dale Bolton was driving to his home in suburban Toronto when he heard the statistic that changed his life. It was 2004 and the gregarious pastor was listening to a lecture about a crisis that was sweeping Africa.

According to the speaker, there were over 34 million orphans on the continent. “I almost ran into a tree,” says Bolton. The number was staggering—the sheer volume of human suffering unimaginable. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

At the time, Bolton wasn’t looking for a new project. He and his wife, Linda, had spent the previous 20 years founding three different churches in Ontario. “I was 51. My dad retired at 53,” says Bolton. He was building a sailboat in their garage, dreaming about the Caribbean. “But this thing would not leave me alone.”

That unignorable statistic started the Boltons on a journey that eventually led them to create Organics 4 Orphans (rebranded last year as Thrive for Good), a not-for-profit that gives communities the resources and knowledge to sustainably grow their own crops.

But that mental leap—from orphans to gardens—didn’t happen immediately. First, the couple raised money for traditional charities, funding orphanages and digging wells. In 2005, they visited those projects in Kenya. Dale had grown up on a farm near Chatham, Ont., and walking through Kenyan villages he was amazed to see that people weren’t growing their own healthy food. The kids were surviving on a diet of ugali, a kind of cornmeal.

As Bolton spent more time there, digging into sub-Saharan history, he came to believe that the problem was the way commercial agriculture, with its dependence on fertilizers and pesticides, had been introduced. Agricultural yields on the continent were significantly lower than in other parts of the world, in large part because small-scale farmers simply couldn’t afford the rising costs of the fertilizer.

The number of orphans, the lack of gardens, the dependence on mass agriculture—for Bolton, it all suddenly seemed inextricably connected. The communities in these villages had the desire and capacity to care for their children, but malnutrition was hampering parents and caregivers.

Dale and Linda decided to start small: by funding and training people to grow modest organic gardens. To that end, Dale enrolled in an organic farming course in Kenya. There, he met Ambrose Mootian, a 25-year-old from a Maasai tribe west of Nairobi.

Like Bolton, Mootian was a farmer’s son. And like Bolton, he’d come to believe in the power of small-scale, organic farming. Together they travelled to Maasai land near the Tanzanian border to help the community start what they came to call a “life garden.” Locals were skeptical, Mootian remembers. “But once they started tasting the food, they were like ‘Wow.’”

After that first project, things moved quickly. “When we helped one village, three more villages asked for help,” says Bolton. The organization went wherever they were wanted—in Kenya and then beyond.

Today, Thrive for Good has 80 employees and interns, and it has helped more than 1,000 communities create healthy meals for almost 30,000 people. Since 2012, they’ve run a training school in Kitale, where Mootian is the CEO. “I’m still planting seeds,” he says, describing how trainees from Kenya—as well as 19 other countries in Africa and beyond—head back home with a newfound knowledge to feed their communities.

As for the Boltons, a few years ago they sold the sailboat. The Caribbean will wait.

These other acts of kindness will make you proud to be Canadian!