You are what you eat

You are what you eat.

A pretty good argument against fruits and nuts.

It is a joke chaps, you can have a giggle.

Seriously though, I’ve been reading about some of the more revolting things that go into the food we eat and it is enough to give the most iron clad stomach the heaves.

Pepsi Cola tests its products on aborted fetuses. This is to test how the human taste bud reacts to a sip of ice-cold cola.

Okay, so they don’t add the dead babies to the soda, but it is about as horrifying to me as testing mascara on baby bunnies.

 

Along with PepsiCo, Nestle, Kraft Foods and (sniff) Cadbury chocolate have also been named. Now I really feel like real a lying advertising low life – I have worked on all these brands, especially their low-fat offerings all of which are tested on foetal kidney cells.

Don’t get me wrong I am pro-choice. Still I am 99.9% sure the mothers didn’t know what would be happening. (You might say well if they cared they wouldn’t have chosen abortion, but it is not an easy choice and I am sure most of them would object most strenuously).

If it is okay to test cool drink on unborn babies, surely it is alright to use them in research on curing Parkinson’s?

Priorities people! What happened to the good old taste test?

I’ve had a look through Google and these are just some of the more bizarre things we ingest every day.

Vanilla ice-cream – I love it – especially when my husband makes it with condensed milk. That aside, the lovely vanilla ice-cream we buy from the store is flavoured with wee.

Not just any wee – beaver wee. I didn’t know there were enough beavers to harvest their wee.

 

Apparently real vanilla – one of my many extravagances, is addictive and makes you feel real good and cosy inside because it makes the body release happy hormones. Yippee!

Cup of tea with sugar anyone? I did not know this and I doubt many of my vegan friends did either, but now I know why I buy the expensive unbleached sugar.

Next time you take a teaspoon of white sugar look closely.

It has been bleached with burnt bone.

I have always been of the opinion that food should not be pink. My children feel that it should also not be green, yellow or orange. Pink and red food is coloured with crushed bug.

We call it carmine, like that it would make it okay.

Many of my countrymen regard the Mopane worm as a delicacy, but at least it is not masquerading as raspberry colouring.

 

Then there is pre-grated cheese. This has been my long time standby as my fingers and the cheese grater have long waged war, the cheese grater usually drawing first blood.

Pre-grated cheese is mostly sawdust – to stop it clumping. I’d rather have it clumpy thanks.

Now may the time to invest a bread maker. Commercial breads add human hair to make them soft. Cannibalism anyone?

Fast food is bad. We know it and we love it. Some of us order the healthy option to make us feel better. Except it’s coated with antifreeze, so you may rather want to order the pink slush they turn into chicken nuggets instead. At least they’ve been deep-fried.

Remember Silly Putty? I once tried to make the world’s largest ball of Silly Putty, but I didn’t try to eat it.

Oh wait… Yes I did, because the same chemical is used to make fast food French fries.

 

I don’t know about South Africa, we don’t like to advertise our gross stuff, but in the US the FDA thinks it totally cool to have a minimum of one rodent hair per serving of peanut butter and some bugs for that crunchy texture.

Jelly beans. I love them. Not any more. They’re coated with shellac which is harvested from the excretion of the Kerria lacca insect.

Thing is, the bugs are small so they more often than not end up on your jelly bean.

Lunch meat. Lunchtime sandwich standby. Never been one of my favourites, but hey, who am I to judge.

We’ve all the experience of peering into the refrigerator to find nothing but a piece of ham. The reason the ham has survived all these months is because they coat it with tiny little viruses to kill the bacteria that would otherwise naturally devour your ancient piece of meat.

Then there are the really disgusting things people have found in their food, which Oddee has kindly assimilated into an easy to peruse list.

There are of course many foods that one might regard as totally repulsive and they usually come from other cultures. I was once asked if I was an adventurous eater and believing it to be true I assented.

My happy-go-lucky demeanour lasted until my colleague ordered Three Squeak Mice from a local Cantonese restaurant. I am now a conservative eater. Very very conservative.

I have a good friend who ended up dropping a plate full of live baby eels into her new Gucci handbag rather than offend.

Here are some other cultural delicacies you may want to try.

It turns out that eating ethically can be problematic what with carbon footprints, ethical working conditions and happy cows. Not even soya is safe. The Amazon rainforest is in threat from vegetarian soya eaters who want meat free food that tastes like meat.

I have to say there are benefits to living in a third world country. I can afford to buy fruit that isn’t irradiated, chickens that run free and beef that isn’t injected full of growth hormone.

I always wondered why tomatoes picked straight from the plant warmed by the sun tasted better than store-bought ones. I’d better get started on my veggie garden.

I wouldn’t want my sons to suddenly become daughters thanks to processed food. Or my daughter to enter puberty any earlier than is strictly necessary. I was a teenage girl, I know what’s coming my way.

Sorry chaps no more McD’s.

McFlurry’s have gone McByebye

This is the best incentive to diet ever! I have no appetite now. None at all. Not even for chocolate.

 

Thanks to:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/10-everyday-foods-with-disgusting-ingredients

http://guyism.com/lifestyle/disgusting-food-facts-you-didnt-know.html