Sunday, October 01, 2006

Junk Food - from owner to pet (now I get it)

Driving trips can put you to the test for healthy eating and healthy feeding. Feeding the dog was easy compared to feeding myself.

Driving alone means you don't have someone to help prepare food. It also means that you're more likely to look at food as entertainment (I drove for four and a half days this trip). I have a great book called Healthy Highways that tells you where all the health food stores and vegetarian restaurants are. I love this book, and use it, but not for every meal. I don't have the time nor the patience to find the places, then spend a precious hour eating there. I want to get the long trip done. So I do what everyone does, eat while I drive, and eat fast food.

Fast food is usually a novelty for me. Not that I have the healthiest diet, but jeez, how do people eat this stuff every day? Every day! You know lots of people do. No wonder they look at you crooked when you talk about health food for pets.

If people eat processed food, fast food, fried salty food every day, their perspective on their pet's food will reflect that. Not that they want to feed their pet badly, but their understanding of what's healthy is skewed by their own experience.

They also have a skewed idea of convenience. If they drive through and pick up a burger that they eat while driving, of course doing more than scooping dry food that they pick up at the supermarket will seem like too much. I've heard that so often, that they won't do more for their dog than they do for themselves, and they do so little for themselves.

I need to have compassion for where they're coming from, but sometimes it seems so obvious that indeed they feed themselves badly, that I can't understand how they do it day in and day out.

No wonder there are rampant health problems related to food - in people and in pets.