Off-Topic: The Other Side

If you came to this blog for something appetizing, look away! Please do come back and visit in a little while when I’ll inevitably be talking about ice cream or something like that again.

Are they gone? Okay, so yes, most of the time, this blog is focused on all of the activities around putting food in your mouth. Every once in a while, one must consider what happens after that. For example, I am trying to spend a bit more time on expending the energy those calories represent, hence my recent repeated references to the 30-Day Shred.

But energy is not the only thing created by our food, of course.

Erm, ahem.

The other day I was momentarily baffled why an image search for “bear poop” had brought a visitor to this food blog. It’s not the first time an errant search for that...um...end of things mistakenly brought someone to this blog (“leaky anus” anyone?). Then it occurred to me that this was an accurate, not errant search, as I actually have a picture of bear poop on my food blog.

All of this is not a topic one normally discusses in polite company (unless you are me and my Long-Distance Gay Husband, in which case you discuss it quite often, but I’m not sure if we count as polite company), but it exists and it’s actually quite a problem in some parts of the world.

I listened to the below surprisingly fascinating podcast on sanitation methods and issues around the globe from The Economist the other day (luckily during the cooking, not eating, part of a cook-a-thon). It is worth a listen, if only to have a new luxury to covet: the Japanese techno-toilet.