About this episode

Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz shares a personal story about nutrition, family, and the challenges of parenting.

Several months ago my wife Shira shared that she was concerned that I was not getting enough protein or fiber in my diet. Her concerns were valid. I am basically a vegetarian, so I am a bit protein-challenged. And I had no idea what fiber is, or how to get enough of it. So Shira connected me to a new AI best friend: ChatGPT’s Nutrition Tracking Assistant. Every day I would log everything I ate, everything I drank, and all my daily exercise, and this omniscient source of knowledge would tell me all I needed to know—and would suggest helpful tweaks for how to get more protein and fiber. It was all going just fine. I was logging every day, ChatGPT was responding with helpful suggestions, and I was eating healthier. Then we went on a family vacation withour adult children and our granddaughter, who was sixteen months old at the time. One night we volunteered to put our granddaughter to bed so that our adult children could go out together for dinner. By the time we had finished the evening ritual—feeding her, bathing her, changing her, giving her one last bottle, and finally getting her to sleep—we were completely wiped out. We had no idea how we had once apparently had the energy to…

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