Another feature on playing overseas

Pete Strobl writes about his playing professional basketball overseas -- very good writing, actually from a book he published on his participation abroad.

An excerpt:

...Initially, I thought that my main focus should be to maintain my weight. Because of my activity level, I could eat almost anything without thinking of the effect my food intake could have on my future. Then, one season, I decided to stop eating junk and fast food altogether. I just stopped, cold turkey. Watching the movie Super Size Me definitely helped sway me in that direction. There was a palpable and amazing difference in the way I felt after a just a few weeks. Year by year, I continued to strip away “foods” that I felt were counterproductive to developing good nutritional habits.

My body continued to change, and I felt the positive effects of my efforts paying off. I had always been capable of running all game long, but now I could do it with even less effort. Our team had made arrangements for us to eat meals at the neighboring grade school cafeteria. When they first told me about it, I wasn’t particularly excited.

The faded canned vegetables, sloppy joes and green jello cafeteria fare I watched my friends eat back at Mayflower Elementary didn’t trigger nostalgic thoughts about grade school cafeteria food to me. It was Fabien who finally convinced me to at least give it a try one day. I was stunned by what I saw. This was actual food and had nothing in common with the trays full of slop that oozed down the sides of the trashcans at my school every day after lunch. Here in Geneva, there were chefs actually preparing and cooking locally grown food. It was amazing. Those school kids ate much better than most Americans of any age...