5. Butter + Brussels Sprouts. Here’s Katie’s “Down Home Cookin’ Recipe” for Brussels sprouts that would have Paula Deen dry heaving into a bowl of heavy cream. Go buy some Brussels sprouts. Frozen, fresh, whatever. Just get some fucking sprouts. Pop those babies into some boiling water and just boil the hell out of them. Their little leaves should be falling off all over the place like it’s Autumn in the Land of Tiny cabbages. Poke ‘em with a fork. Pretty soft? Like somebody could lob it at you from across the room and it probably wouldn’t hurt that much? Cool. Strain those little suckers and then add approximately fourteen quarts of butter. Sprinkle on about a coffee mug’s worth of salt because what are we, barbarians? And some pepper. For color, or something. For added fun, see how many whole sprouts you can fit into your mouth while you sit cross-legged on the living room floor munching out of a Pyrex bowl and watching Dr. Oz. (Answer: six)

4. Melted Processed Cheese Product + Green Things. The cheese should be obvious. Cheese +anything, be it vegetables or bread or vanilla ice cream or your janky carburetor = delicious. You could get all fancy pantsy and pick a gourmet cheese about which I have more than your average number of opinions, but in all honesty your best bet is to dig through the back of your fridge and find that half a block of Velveeta you know is back there somewhere. Never bought Velveeta before? Doesn’t matter. Eventually every refrigerator becomes stocked with a block of Velveeta (a theory proven by Italian naturalist Francesco Redi in his famous 17^th century experiment wherein he realized that Velveeta naturally formed on lumps of rotting meat). I say green things because it seems like broccoli is the head honcho vegetable for saturating with cheese. The ratio should be something like 35:1. If it doesn’t take you a solid minute and a half to fish a chunk of broccoli out of your bowl, you haven’t added enough cheese.

3. Deep fat fry everything. Deep fat fryers aren’t a common kitchen appliance, which is why it isn’t higher on the list. So usually consuming deep fat fried vegetables requires you to physically stand up, put on pants, and go to the nearest place that serves said deep fat fried vegetables. Any physical exertion that might negate some of your caloric intake defeats the purpose of making these vegetables unhealthy, so I suggest against it. But let’s say for the sake of argument you have a deep fat fryer in your kitchen (and thus presumably an angioplasty home-kit in your basement). Here’s what you should deep fat fry: … … No, wait. This’ll be easier. Here’s what you shouldn’t deep fat fry: the family pet. Beyond that, have at it soldier! Might I suggest a spoonful of cream sweet corn sprinkled with flour then deep fat fried? It tastes like the sexiest unicorn ever shat a rainbow directly into your mouth.

2. Pretend potatoes are a vegetable. According to the NHS, potatoes do not count toward their suggested five daily portions of fruit and vegetables. But that doesn’t stop most of us from deluding ourselves into thinking a dinner entirely comprised of pound and a half of tater tots suffocated with ketchup is “good” for us. It’s “good” in the cosmic sense. “Good” in the spiritual sense. “Good,” for sure, in the small sector of society that judges moral standards by how many tater tots are involved in any given situation. But certainly not “good” for our cholesterol. I’m as guilty of this as the next guy – my favorite snack as a youngster was a whole raw potato, washed peeled and diced, and then rolled in salt. How am I not dead yet?

1. All of the ranch dressing. No really, all of it. There is not a single vegetable that is not improved/ruined by ranch dressing. And the best part of it is, you can combine ranch dressing with numbers five through two on this list and crank their unhealthiness level to 11. Buttery sprouts covered in ranch. Cheesy broccoli dipped in ranch. Deep fat fried sweet corn ball nuggetmergiggers injected with ranch via syringe. And don’t even get me started on the kinds of dances my heart does when I eat a pan of roasted potatoes that have been covered in powdered ranch dressing mix. Saturated fat content: nine billion. Salt content: how much does the sun weigh again? But I can assure you that even when your lifeless body is splayed out on the autopsy table, opened up from neck to belly, and the coroner is squeezing ranch dressing out of your cold arteries straight onto his lunch salad, you won’t regret having consumed as much as you did.

–Katie Sisneros