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.“I’m becoming concerned about the general health of the ladies,” Jace said a few days later, at the officer’s meeting that Hunter had begun calling every week or so.Ri and Bev exchanged looks.Jace was watching them.“You have been here for almost exactly a month, and you are all losing weight.While I understand that, on your planet, being skinny and malnourished is apparently the ideal, I do not like it.”“Jace,” Ri sighed, leaning forward, “We’re just adjusting to the new foods and the constant exercise.That’s all.Our metabolisms will level out soon, I’m sure.”“Soon is not good enough,” Jace growled.He tossed her a small med scanner and nodded at it as she caught it deftly and looked down at the information.Bev and Trey had been hard at work, figuring out how to integrate all of the computers to translate both Thorsani and English on the same screen.“How recent are these?” she asked, frowning.“They’re from the scans I did yesterday,” Jace said, sitting forward, his hands on the table.“Every one of you has lost weight, some more than others.As a physician, it bothers me that your people have been encouraged to be so thin, when it appears that your bodies are meant to carry extra stores of fat and muscle.”“Our doctors tend to go by weight, rather than general health, most of the time,” Bev said absently.“I’ve really lost that much weight?”“Aye,” Trey grunted, narrowing his gaze on her.“And I don’t like it one bit, either.People will think I am starving you, if you become too scrawny.”Bev rolled her eyes at him, but blushed and blew him a kiss.“I’m nowhere near to starving,” she laughed, shaking her head.“Arianna is also losing weight,” Hunter noted.“And while I still find your figure quite enticing, you are beginning to look a bit sickly.”“Thank you.I think you’re a sexy beast, too,” Ri snorted.She sighed and sat forward, dropping the scanner to the table.“The truth is, you guys are feeding us too well.All the right stuff, none of the bad.You have us on a diet of all natural fruits, vegetables, and meats.”“Mostly protein,” Bev said, picking the scanner up and flipping through several different screens until she brought up the chemical and nutritional breakdowns of the foods the men had been cataloging for the past decade.“Our systems are geared for more grains and fats than you guys, apparently.The kind of diet you’re feeding us is all well and good, but long-term could see some kidney damage, since we’ve evolved to process more than just meats.”“I would not be nearly as concerned about your weight, if your blood levels were adequate, but they are not.Do you have medical files anywhere that might help me to understand and come up with some supplements, until we can adjust your diets?” Jace asked, arching a brow at Ri.It was Bev who answered, though.“I think she has an entire SD card of books on nutrition, diets, and cooking,” the blond said.“You should be able to access them in the med center.”“Cooking?” Trey perked up.As the Thorsani in the room groaned, he grinned at Bev, a sparkle in his eye.“What kinds of foods are you ladies used to?”“Grains, sugars, veggies, meat and dairy fats…” Ri shrugged.“I’ll admit that we don’t need all the bleached and chemically processed foods that our society had moved to in the last fifty years, but there’s probably something on this planet we can use as substitutes for the starches and everything that our bodies are used to.”Jace nodded, his brow furrowed in thought.Finally, he sat back with a sigh.“Are any of the girls knowledgeable about the kinds of things you need to be eating?” he asked.Kim nodded, bringing up a new screen on the table’s central computer monitor.“Three of them were in nutrition and dietitian programs.I think Christy was actually very close to graduating with a masters degree.She’s the one you should get working with your folks on this one, I think.”“Good,” Hunter said.“And perhaps we should do an informal survey, ask the girls what their favorite foods were back on your world, then see if we have any equivalents here.There’s no sense starting from scratch, if we can approximate your foods with what’s available.”“That makes sense,” Ri murmured.Then she grinned and cut a look at her mates.“I’d love to be able to make you guys an old-fashioned southern breakfast sometime.”Bev’s eyes closed and she groaned at the thought.“Eggs, bacon, grits,” she breathed.Ri chuckled.“Toast, on bread that doesn’t try to chip our teeth.”“Hey!” Trey said, wounded.“I came up with those biscuit recipes.I cannot help it if your women are so fragile that their teeth can’t break through the crust.”“Trey,” Hunter said ruefully, arching a brow at his friend, “You are one of my dearest friends and my favorite cousin, but those biscuits challenge our teeth, and we have stronger teeth than the humans.”“It’s not my fault if I have not been able to find a good leavening agent,” Trey grumped, crossing his arms over his chest.“Have you tried capturing wild yeast?” Ri asked.The room went silent and she blushed at the sudden sharp attention on her.Trey’s eyebrows rose in question.“Do you not have yeast here?”“What is yeast?” he asked, truly curious.“It’s a bacteria that we had back on Earth,” she said, throwing Jace a grin when he bristled at the use of a germ in food.“We have a number of them, actually, that are beneficial, and some that aren’t so much.But yeast is one of those that can be found naturally in a number of places.I’ve heard of capturing your own from the local air, and growing it into a ‘starter’ for breads.”“Now you’ve done it,” Hunter murmured, a half-grin kicking up the corner of his mouth.“What?” Ri asked, blinking.“Trey is a chef, a master.You have told him something of the culinary world that he did not know.”“And are you also a chef?” Trey asked, cocking his head eagerly at Ri.She shook hers.“Oh, no,” she assured him.“But I learned to cook and bake at a very young age, and even decorated cakes and played around with candies and pastries at one 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