Butch’s List of Unhealthy Foods

Many people my age now try to watch what they eat and try to find foods that are considered more healthy. I looked online to see what foods are considered unhealthy. Here are a few:  Processed meats like bacon, hot dogs and cold cuts, fast food burgers, potato chips, donuts, snack foods, french fries, white bread, processed cheese and sodas. Great! Last week my wife and I had bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches on white bread, cheeseburgers and fries at McDonalds, coney dogs and cheese curds at the Dog ‘n Suds, Krispy Kreme donuts . . . and we snacked on potato chips, cookies, crackers, ice cream bars…and drank Coke and Diet Pepsi every day . . . OOPS! We both seem to be pretty healthy, so who knows?

   We try to eat “healthy” foods too . . . some of the time. I guess most people are going to eat what they like, no matter what. There are several foods that I will not touch . . . oysters (regular and the Rocky Mountain version), liver (looks like a steak soaked in blood), lamb burgers (smells like wool), mincemeat and Spam (I don’t even know what that stuff is made from), pickled pigs feet (I know where those pigs have had their feet), sushi (no way I’m eating a raw fish!), cow brains, pig brains or cow tongue (gross!), baked possum (yes, some people eat that), head cheese (what is that?), fried rabbit (I refuse to devour a cute little bunny) and shark or octopus meat . . . just to name a few. I also refuse to eat lobster. I feel sorry for them swimming around in the tank at the restaurant. They stare at me, “Please don’t pick me, please . . . I don’t want to be boiled alive. I have a wife and kids at home.”

   People around the world eat all types of crazy things . . . fried grasshoppers and other insects, guinea pigs on a stick, duck tongues, jellied eel, worm omelets, cow afterbirth and roasted rats . . . seriously! All I can say is that those people must be darn hungry. If I was starving to death, I still don’t think I could eat a roasted rat. Fried grasshopper? Maybe. Do you know that there are people who drink their own urine? It’s true! I’m sorry, but I think I’ll stick with Diet Pepsi.

   A cousin of mine had to swallow live goldfish as part of a fraternity initiation at Purdue back in the 1950s. One of my fifth grade students would drink from a mudhole, swallow a bug, or bite a worm in two if another student promised to give him a quarter. I did bite a click beetle in half one time when I was about 9 years old. The bug had crawled into my mouth when I was asleep. That was the same year I ate a dog biscuit to see what it tasted like . . . not bad really. Yes, I also ate Rocky Mountain oysters one time, and after Dad told me what they were, I never had those again.

   So here’s what I say . . . eat what you want . . . healthy or unhealthy, nice or gross, dead or alive. After my evening meal, I always have eight Lorna Doone cookies and milk. It may not be good for me, but hey, it’s a tradition!

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 37 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.