Eating Like Beavers

Do you read labels?  I have for various reasons most of our married life.  During dieting phases, I have checked: calories, fat, carbohydrates, etc, for instance.  And, though it's always been a trial to my math-challenged brain, I do cost compare items...  But  most the time I haven't bothered much with what ingredients were in the foods because I was too busy trying to figure out whether it was cheaper to buy the lunch meat that was $.09 an ounce or $1.79 a pound, but also because we've always tended toward whole foods. Don't mistake me, though: I'm not a foodie and I'm not very "granola," It's just that back in the day, the simple, naturally healthful foods tended to be cheaper.  Remember that?  Remember when you could go to the farmers' market when organic produce was cheaper than store-bought?  But, I digress...

I just saw a report that a lawsuit against Taco Bell has prompted a USDA investigation of the use of cellulose in prepared foods.  You know what cellulose is?  It's wood pulp.  And it's in everything these days from particle board to sausage to milk shakes to tortillas (Go here for a list).

 The Department of Agriculture, claiming that wood pulp is safe for us to digest, allows for a content of 3.5% in individual food items.  Wood pulp. We're eating wood pulp.   I don't know about you -- but even if I believed in evolution, I don't have any idea that we came from beavers.  At least I didn't.  And I have a hard time believing that Adam and Eve sat around the Garden of Eden gnawing on trees.   In short, it just plain old goes against every instinct for me to believe God intended us to have a little wood pulp in all of our food.   It's a little scary to know that the "powers that be," however, consider it perfectly appropriate for the food industry to use wood as a food filler -- in any amount.  But it's cheap. An easily obtainable by-product, you know.   And they say it's good fiber.  Yeah, I'll say it's good fiber. 

Makes me wonder a little about the increasingly high rate of colon cancer in the world...

Seriously.  Like I don't have enough to worry about with William wanting nothing but jelly sandwiches and popcorn.  Now I have to make sure there's no wood pulp in the jelly?

Sheesh.