OMGBUGZ--or Life Is Not Poisonous
I don't know how many of you read the junk_food_sc RSS feed, but if you don't, and you care about things like how the medical community and the mainstream media lies to you on a regular basis in order to frighten you, you should. It's an interesting and excellent blog, and can make you feel a little better about all those people who would condemn you to the Lower Rings of the Inferno for eating a piece of bacon, and when you really get bored with being told that everything you eat, drink, smoke, breathe, touch, look at, listen to or otherwise expose yourself to is going to kill you.
Life is not poisonous, my HPS used to say, and everything has bugs. Well, she didn't say the part about the bugs, but she did say the stuff about the poison, so I know that she would agree with the parts about the bugs. And while I do have my squick point regarding food-prep surfaces and cross contamination, I also know that I have consumed quite a bit more than my peck of dirt (Jobe's great granny insisted that you had "to eat a peck of dirt before you die", and that you, quite inadvertantly most of the time, probably would), and that I managed to negotiate over a half-century doing so. And considering that even the FDA does not strive to make our ingestibles bug free but only containing an acceptable level of bug-ness, I think that this whole craziness about the cochineal red is fair hysteria.
Bugs happen, and they happen right along with you. And in the case of the cochineal, they're kind of pretty, and they can help make you pretty, too, by laying down their lives for the sake of your lipstick and the red dyes in the clothing you wear.
I remember my Aunt Agnes freaking out after watching a television program about dust mites, and couldn't lie in her bed without feeling them crawling all over her for several weeks, forgetting that she had been, quite comfortably, sharing her bed with them for years.
Life is not poisonous, but it's clear that, just as in the case of my Aunt, our minds can be.
Which is the word of wisdom, as we approach the wonderful hedonism that is the weekend....
You are as safe as you think you are, and in exactly as much danger as your mind tells you.
Life is not poisonous, my HPS used to say, and everything has bugs. Well, she didn't say the part about the bugs, but she did say the stuff about the poison, so I know that she would agree with the parts about the bugs. And while I do have my squick point regarding food-prep surfaces and cross contamination, I also know that I have consumed quite a bit more than my peck of dirt (Jobe's great granny insisted that you had "to eat a peck of dirt before you die", and that you, quite inadvertantly most of the time, probably would), and that I managed to negotiate over a half-century doing so. And considering that even the FDA does not strive to make our ingestibles bug free but only containing an acceptable level of bug-ness, I think that this whole craziness about the cochineal red is fair hysteria.
Bugs happen, and they happen right along with you. And in the case of the cochineal, they're kind of pretty, and they can help make you pretty, too, by laying down their lives for the sake of your lipstick and the red dyes in the clothing you wear.
I remember my Aunt Agnes freaking out after watching a television program about dust mites, and couldn't lie in her bed without feeling them crawling all over her for several weeks, forgetting that she had been, quite comfortably, sharing her bed with them for years.
Life is not poisonous, but it's clear that, just as in the case of my Aunt, our minds can be.
Which is the word of wisdom, as we approach the wonderful hedonism that is the weekend....
You are as safe as you think you are, and in exactly as much danger as your mind tells you.