For my birthday recently, a very dear friend sent me a bouquet of balloons.

Ordinarily, most folks would find this a treasured and much-anticipated gesture.

I treat it much like a ticking package from the “Official I Hate Morris Fan Club.”

That’s because my friend has a wicked sense of humor.

Last year, after hearing about my ongoing battle of the belly (which annually goes about as well as the recent skirmish between Georgia and Russia, with my tubby self resembling a crushed Georgian infantry unit) and my growing disdain for all foods of a green hue, my friend sent me a similar bouquet of balloons.

Attached to the bottom of the balloon strings?

A can of green beans.

As I may have mentioned in a column last year, I can just imagine the phone conversation at the local florist.

“You want a can of what attached to the balloons?”

This year, once again, my friend sent me a collection of balloons attached to something edible.

Once again, it was a package of beans.

The difference is that this year, it was the kind of beans that I actually love.

Jelly beans.

Needless to say, I was much happier with this year’s arrival than last year’s.

More importantly, it made me realize just how prejudiced and bigoted most nutritionists can be.

Trust me, I’ve been on just about every diet you can imagine.

I’ve had so many pre-diet photos taken of me over the years that some people have mistakenly assumed that my first name is “Before.”

Nearly two decades ago, I perused a book about jogging by running expert Jim Fixx.

He died not long after.

I remained fat.

In the last decade, I tried the Atkins diet.

Again, I’m still fat, and he’s dead.

I’d love to try some of Rachel Ray’s eating suggestions, but I’m afraid America would miss her.

Face it, I’m like the calorie-counting grim reaper.

Through all of my dieting attempts, I’ve noticed that nearly every diet known to man has this obsession with beans.

Especially things like green beans and lima beans.

But I’ve yet to find one that includes jelly beans on the list of acceptable vegetables.

I think that’s unfair.

Obviously they’re in the bean family, otherwise the Federal Trade Commission would have shut them down years ago for false labeling.

They certainly look and weigh about the same as a kidney bean.

Just like a navy bean or pinto bean, they fit nicely up either the left or right nostril.

(Don’t make that face…you know you’ve done it too.)

Jelly beans even have some of the same biological properties as lima beans.

For example, you can put a handful of lima beans into a cut-off milk carton filled with soil, and a useless green plant will soon sprout.

Similarly, if you put a handful of jelly beans into your average two year old, a terrorizing little hyperactive monster will sprout.

The bottom line is that jelly beans have been discriminated against for years.

I think it’s time we all make our voices heard, and petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture with our demands that jelly beans be classified as a vegetable.

(We’d probably have a better shot at this if former president and jelly bean connoisseur Ronald Reagan were still alive.)

Then, as soon as the government acquiesces to our demand, I intend to file for a jelly bean subsidy, where the feds will pay me $100,000 a year not to grow jelly beans in my back yard.

Until then, I’ll just continue eating my sugar free jelly beans and counting it as a veggie replacement on my Deal-A-Meal, and dare Richard Simmons to say anything about it.