I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a dog person rather than a cat person. It’s not that I think cats are bad, or hate them, it’s just they are different than dogs. Dogs get excited when they see you, like attention, enjoy being loved up and are known as “Man’s best friend.”

Cats on the other-hand can be fickle, temperamental and often like to keep to themselves. They also can be mischievous and can get into their fair-share of trouble. Reminds me of the saying, “Curiosity killed the cat!”

If you haven’t heard that one, it is an old proverb that reminds us of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimentation.¹ While it is often good in many situations to mind your business, truth be told…sometimes it is necessary to question things or try different ways of doing something. Maybe cats are on to something? After all—how can we make progress, or get ahead, if we don’t question how things are done or why certain circumstances exist? We need to be inquisitive sometimes. That’s how we got to the moon, can visit all kinds of places on an airplane, typewriters became a thing of the past and why there are fewer and fewer land-lines installed. Yes—indeed curiosity can be a good thing!

With the obesity epidemic on the rise and countless people who have health issues related to their diets and nutrition, it is time we all become a little more curious. We need to start to question why people are getting sick and why it is that more than half of the population is over weight. What is going on? That is a difficult question to answer, as it involves problems created on many levels involving the food supply and food system, from industrialization, big business and lobbyists for farmers and drug companies influencing our government. If you look back in time however, especially the last 50 years or so, it is easy to see how our food has changed and that is a big part of the problem. Society today eats more processed foods containing artificial ingredients and preservatives than real, wholesome foods. Many people don’t know the difference either and that is scary and sad.

Michael Pollan, in his book, Food Rules an eater’s manual, tells us, “Not to eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”² Now there’s something to contemplate and something for us all to consider. Wow! I can just imagine my great grandma walking into a grocery store today. Talk about curiosity! There are literally thousands and thousands of food products to choose from. Some of our great grandmothers would be more than curious. Some of these old ladies would probably freak-out and get their bloomers all in a bunch with all of the changes and selections!

But seriously…there is so much available today they probably would be dumb-founded by the sight of it all. Just imagine if they went to buy a few simple items and found all this strange stuff lurking in the many grocery store isles like, Kraft Singles, Gogurt, or something called Hot Pockets. I mean, think about it? Kraft Singles aren’t even cheese. It’s a man-made item, which is supposed to resemble and look like the real thing. “It’s actually a pasteurized prepared cheese product that is individually wrapped in plastic. It can’t even be referred to as cheese because of an FDA rule that states that it must be at least 51 percent real cheese.”³ Yikes! I thought cheese was a dairy product and you needed a cow, or a goat to produce it?

Yogurt in a tube is another strange and somewhat ridiculous thing. It not only is loaded with sugar, it’s available in some weird flavors and promotes putting some plastic packaging in your mouth. What happened to eating with a spoon anyway and who wants yogurt that tastes like bubble gum? That sounds disgusting, at least to me!

Oh and the Hot Pockets! Austin Powers may have made them popular, but Great Grandma would probably be thinking she is buying something to help her iron her clothes with a name like that, instead of some sort of processed bread product. They’re actually processed pizza bites that are loaded with corn syrup, imitation butter, cheese and a whole bunch of other stuff. What is L-Cysteine hydrochloride anyway? I don’t know either. Make sure you read the food label before buying this one item.

In my book, Wholey Cow A simple Guide To Eating And Living, I talk a little bit about the importance of reading food labels and taking care of your health. We all need to pay more attention to them and notice more what we are eating. Make sure you look at the number of ingredients and notice what they are. If the list is long you may want to look for a similar item with fewer ingredients, as there is less of a chance of eating a bunch of preservatives or food additives.  If the list contains a lot of ingredients with hard to pronounce words, you’re probably better off not buying the product. You can look for something that has more natural ingredients, or opt for something else altogether, like an apple, banana, or some carrots.

Now there’s a thought! Let’s all try and get a little more back to the basics and be more like the cat when we choose our food because if we don’t, our lack of curiosity just might kill us.

Thanks for reading!

Barb

Source:

¹”Curiosity Killed the Cat.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Apr. 2017. Web. 25 May 2017.

²Pollen, Michael. Food Rules and Eaters Manual. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

³”The Dirty Truth About Kraft Singles You Might Not Want to Know.” Spoon University. N.p., 23 July 2015. Web. 30 May 2017.