"H-F-what?"
According to my health-conscious teenagers, it is no longer enough to monitor sugar, salt, and saturated fats. We also need to avoid HFC, or high fructose corn syrup, a component in nearly everything I buy in a jar (jams, sauces, pancake syrup, salad dressing...). Megan informed me that consumption of this common ingredient must be avoided because "it makes you stupid."
"How can that be?" I asked, "I've been eating this stuff for years."
(And yet, I do have goats...Surely there is no correlation?)
Apparently, Megan claims, the "stupidity" side-effect has been scientifically proven by experiments with mice. Rodents who were fed HFC eventually lost their ability to find their way out of a maze. (My suspicion is this - maybe the test mice, suddenly fed a diet of hot-fudge sauce and blackberry jam, didn't want to leave the maze. Hey Stuart, this new food sure beats dry nuts and seeds! Let's just keep wandering around in here and get the good stuff!)
Back to the goats...here's how I know that something in our diet is decreasing general intelligence. Whenever friends, relatives or complete strangers learn that we have goats, they always want to know first whether our pets have the foul "stink" for which bucks are known. I explain that Em and Ellie are neutered males, and therefore devoid of noxious odors. Invariably, the next question is, "Do you milk them?"
Really??? In what alternate universe do we milk male livestock?
My goats are two of quadruplets. My own daughters, twins. Once, a woman in an elevator peered at my identically-dressed toddlers in their double stroller and commented, "They don't really look alike. Are you sure they're twins?" (Well, yes, I actually am...)
More recently, a school classmate chatted with both girls (one blonde, one brunette; one fair-skinned and freckled to her sister's darker complexion). "I never realized you were twins!" he remarked. "Are you identical or fraternal?"
Maybe we all need to stop eating HFC!!
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