Will adding 5 to 10 pounds from holiday feasting force you back to the sweaty urgency and wearying demands of the gym: the rat racing on the dreadmill; the pumping and dumping iron with clangorous resound?

Or is it your hope that it'll all go away if a fitness guru chants "mino cho cho bo bo," and puts his hand on your left femur?

Safer than a sweat lodge or dream circle is a healthy diet. But must the food taste like it comes on a tray in a ward?

No optimal eating plan for New Year atonement will last the winter if not predicated on healthy food that tastes good, predicts Orean the Health Express, an all-vegetarian restaurant.

To manage this, must owner Orean Thomas go to the produce market every morning and buy only organic? "when it's available at the right price. You've got to be competitive." Thomas doesn't mince meat or words.

How's business? When informed that in a recent survey, teenagers told Teenage Research Limited Foundation that vegetarian is "in" a skeptical Thomas replied, "Must have been funded by Field & Stream."

Thomas admitted that kids are a renewable resource, but said most of them come for French fries — air fries actually, cooked in a popcorn-like popper. "Air fries and the soy ice cream cones."

For adults trying to get off the holiday gravy train cold turkey, a soy ice cream dessert will punctuate lighter meals and reduce the worry of having to add a comma to their cholesterol counts.

For overeaters, it would be no sacrifice to trade a Taco Bell meaty gordita for Orean's African Burrito. Not as filling but tastier, it is stuffed with soy cheese, black-eyed peas, lettuce, tomatoes, onion, African salsa, organic clover sprouts and a tahini paste of crushed sesame seeds ($4.69). And instead of trundling next door for a Big Mac, try the "filet-of-soul" tofu burger ($3.89) or better, the ultimate veggie burger," as I did recently. Given my suspicions about "harvest" burgers — that they might convert to ethanol — I was surprised by the Orean's snappy good flavor. It stems from clover sprouts, myriad fresh-cut veggies, iron-rich sunflower seeds, black beans, tomato, onion, pickle and an impudently fresh secret sauce.

"If you want to feel alive, you must eat food that is fresh and alive," said Thomas.

But more than fresh food is required to maintain fitness and slimness — you've got to know what the mattress tastes like, too. "Rest is very important," said Thomas, "and so is the right amount of exercise. Golfers should walk. They shouldn't put the cart before the course."

"Attitude is critical, too. If you must have smaller portions on the plate, think half-full, not half-empty. ... A lecture at college by writer/reformer Uptown Sinclair in the mid-'60's changed my attitude about eating. As Sinclair read selections from his classic, The Jungle, exposing the wretched work conditions in the packing industry, I started losing my appetite for meat. Two years later, with the help from a food allergy, I became a dedicated vegetarian."

But Thomas, as an advocate for vegetarianism, doesn't believe in scare tactics. He'd never suggest that red meat eaters would develop kidney stones on any rocky road to degradation. He feels that his faith in the benefits of a healthy diet "should be passed around."

Asked if he had any faith in "neutraceuticals," those manufactured food products that are supposed to prevent disease and improve health beyond standard nutrition and veggie-fresh diets, he replied, "They call them neutraceuticals so they can charge more."

But are they any good? "I've heard when vermin get into the neutraceutical processing plants, they eat the boxes not the food. That tells me something."

Most of Orean's business is drive-thru and take-out, including breakfast. But I saw a lot of guys at outside tables that looked like meat types. They were eating tofu pastrami sandwiches — Jewish deli-like in taste, I'm told, but no fat. Vegans, the big puritans of the veggie world, who refuse to eat animal derivatives like eggs, milk and cheese, would love the place, except for the cheeseburger.

Before leaving, I gulped down a "Super Green" drink. It contained Siberian Ginseng, an energizer that once must have kept gulag gravediggers to the task ("probably bottled in Brooklyn," said Thomas). But is ginseng an aphrodisiac? Will it give us all a lift? "You gotta believe."

Thomas would point out obvious drawbacks to the vegetarian regimen — like you won't be able to cross your arms and rest them on your stomach anymore, and with out an inner tube, it won't be as easy to float in the pool.

I liked Thomas as much as his food.

Originally printed in the Pasadena Weekly