Today’s little blog is inspired by the wife. Those of you who know Kingston (SW London, UK) will know of the annoying area where the market researchers hang out (Back of Eden Walk). The rule is to speed up and look straight ahead, never make eye contact or you’ll be homed in on and talked to.
Anyhow, the wife got sucked in recently, helping with taste testing of yoghurts. For her effort she got a chocolate bar, supposedly highly valuable currency in female society.
Anyhow, the yoghurt was designed to improve skin appearance, a so-called functional food, you seem to get yoghurts these days that promise to do all sorts of things. She reported it tasted like sawdust.
This got me thinking….. If I were to set up a number of alter e-egos on the glorious interweb, I wonder if I could start up a food fad,where people are convinced of supposed health benefits of unusual foods. As if there is not enough of such stuff out there. I am sure i can find a couple of suitable online forums to launch my idea, especilly if my e-egos worked together. The food that sprung to mind when the wife was telling me about her experience was ….. Catfood. Yes, in the UK there is a famous brand that is proved to make the fur of your dear pussycat glossier, I even know the guy who helped them scientifically prove the claim. It would be easy, given there is real scientific evidence , to ‘extend’ it slightly. Ok, catfood may not be the most appealing thing to improve your beauty, but remember 2 points… Its cheaper than most miracle foods or beauty treatments, no-one expects good medicine to taste nice…… It’s probably as effective as those more expensive options anyhow.
I was wondering if issuing advice as to the best dose rates, relative effectiveness of different brands/flavours or even a list of suggested recipes would be pushing the idea too far………
Who says that we scientists have no sense of humour and live boring lives? Please note that I have better things to occupy my time, so if anyone does try this one on, it isn’t going to be me, i’m too busy ‘wilfing’. That final term comes to us from the guardian newspaper last week…. Probably a blatant attempt to invent a new word…. It is even trying to get into wikipedia. The term is supposed to describe the new habit of random internet surfing that seems to consume so much of our lives…. Wilf….”what was I looking for”….. We’ll have to see how it catches on.
