Food for Thought
On reading labels…
If ingredients are so hard to pronounce
that you can’t get your tongue around
them, then chances are good
that this isn’t food
and it doesn’t belong in your mouth.
#132
Linda Studley
Can't Put the Pen Down…
Archive for the tag “food”
Food Fear 3
The scarlet letter of shame today
is not an “A”.
It’s the “S” painted on the shaker of salt
that’s at fault.
The salt shaker top is littered with holes,
it’s hard to control
the amount of salt that hits your food
and you overdo
because salt is teeny and hard to see,
it’s pale and wee.
Not like pepper that is easy to see
and makes you sneeze.
Though pepper lives in a shaker too
the holes are few.
And though pepper is safer than salt they say
this is the way
we traditionally think our seasonings should be
but it seems
pepper should be in the shaker marked “S”
(for ‘Safe’, I guess.)
And salt should be kept in the one marked “P”
’cause it seems to me,
since we know too much salt is bad for us –
“P” for ‘Perilous’.
#248
Food Fear 2
The slippery slope, diet-arily,
is greased with butter apparently
so now we’ve switched to tubs of some kind of margarine
something that isn’t really butter at all
it’s got no trans-fats or cholesterol
but it comes in a round plastic tub, to my chagrin.
‘cause in every fridge with their racks and drawers
there’s a wee compartment with a flippy door
where you keep your block of butter all cool and sweet
but the tub won’t fit where the butter once dwelt
and if you leave it on the counter it kinda melts
into separate unappetizing puddles of muck and grease.
So I keep it in the fridge, with the low fat cheese
and the fruits and veggies and all that wheeze
that’ll make me live longer and enjoy life more
but as full as my refrigerator every gets
There’s just one space where nothing sets
‘cause nothing but butter fits behind a flippy-door.
#247
Food Fear
A soft boiled egg perched in a cup
with a jaunty, hand knit cap on top
and buttered toast cut into strips
to dunk so you didn’t miss a bit
of the bright yellow yolk
so smooth and delicious
who knew that eggs
could be so malicious
as to hide the fiend cholesterol
that would lead to a dietary fall
from grace. All I can say is “Crap,
now what’ll I do with the jaunty cap?”
#246
Dietary Blues
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
That is what the diet gurus and the doctors say.
It’s also where the two diverge and no one can agree
on whether 2 or 5 more meals are what is good for me.
Some say browse, some say graze, but I’m not a deer or cow
Some say six small meals beats three squares, anyhow
it’s not just the carbs that are complex in this equation
breakfast, lunch, and supper are now planned like an invasion
with several stops for healthy snacks, like yogurt, fruit, or veg
I’ve eaten enough foliage today to build a hedge.
Cut salt (which is the only thing that makes a hedge edible).
Cut fat and cholesterol. It really is incredible
how overwhelming meal planning’s suddenly become
With his and hers requirements and taboos, it’s no fun
and if perchance we happen, on something that tastes good
that both of us can eat with impunity we would
eat it so darn often that we’d tire of its charms
so back into the dietary fray, we take up arms
and forge ahead though meal planning’s getting to be a bore
Just put it in a pill, I don’t want to cook no more.
#166
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Linda Studley
Linda Studley is a writer, songwriter, independent recording artist, and sometime graphic artist living in Northern BC, Canada
Linda Studley 