A couple of weeks ago, my oldest son Drew sent me a link to this article:
In his defense, Drew grew up on a steady diet (pun intended) of Dr. Seuss, Monty Python and The Princess Bride. Therefore, Drew is attuned to the silliness and the oddities of life, so he sends me this stuff. Truth be told, Drew’s sister and younger brother are also just as silly. The three of them must have gotten that from their mother.
Anyway, in light of all the uncertainty in Ottawa these days, all of us probably need to enhance our cognitive functioning and critical thinking in order to keep track of things, Chewing on hard materials such as diamond, shoe leather and stale bagels might help us get some answers to these pressing questions:
When is Trudeau stepping down? When will Carney take the reins? And for how long? What’s Freeland going to do for a living now? I’ll bet she’s not going into modeling. (OK, that was mean. Strike that from the record.)
Will Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Federal Conservative Party, be the next Prime Minister? Will people learn to pronounce his name properly? (Poy-lee-ev-ruh is the Parisian French pronunciation but if you’re not in France you can probably get by with Poy-lee-ev. Just don’t say Paw-lee-ver.)
It’s all so confusing.
And speaking of confusion, what person in full possession of their faculties would ever fork over $1800 for a French Fry? Even if it WAS shaped like the Nike Swoosh? And what would that person do with it? Put it in a special sealed display case pressurized with an inert gas like Argon, Xenon or maybe the political rhetoric that is venting on both sides of the 49th parallel?
I don’t know about you, but if I bought that French Fry I would for sure stick it in a time capsule somewhere…
First Archaeologist, opening time capsule in distant future: “Heaven’s to Betsy! What in tarnation is THIS?”
Other Archaeologist: “Well, it looks to me like a French Fry that has assumed the shape of a Nike Swoosh.”
First Archaeologist: “Knock me over with a feather! What in blazes is a Nike Swoosh? And what was WRONG with those people?”
Other Archaeologist: “A fair question but here’s an even fairer question: why are you using those archaic expressions?”
First Archaeologist: “It was that cache of DVDs I dug up a few weeks ago: the one containing all 14 seasons of Bonanza. I couldn’t stop watching them gol-durned Cartwight’s.”
Other Archaeologist: “Right. What’s a DVD?”
Okay, moving right along here, it turns out that researchers have been intensively studying the relationship between chewing and cognitive function over the last couple of decades. A few sporadic papers on the topic appeared between the 50’s and late 80’s but then the number of papers started to rise exponentially.
I attribute this to the advent of smartphones in the early 2000’s. After that, instead of reading books or doing something productive, people of all ages began mindlessly scrolling their phones and sending memes to each other. Cognitive function was taking it on the chin so research on the effect of chewing and cognition accelerated.
It seems that chewing increases blood flow to the brain and per the citation above, brain antioxidant levels also increase. The harder your masseters, aka jaw muscles, have to work, the more blood flows to the brain. More oxygen to the brain: more antioxidants: more high octane thinking: more cognitive speed. Apparently cows are the exception in this.
I ran into a bit of a mental block at this point so I got up, fished out a pack of gum and started chewing away. Sarge, too, was looking a bit mopey and sluggish so I gave him a couple of beef rawhide sticks to give him a bit of a cognitive jump start. Here he is in mid-chew:
He’s not that big on chewing treats. It’s more like he swallows them mostly intact, kind of like a furry python. Anyway, it seemed to help: Sarge perked up and challenged me to a game of tic tac toe. Fortunately I won, although it was close. Sarge should’ve done more chewing and less engulfing.
Well, I could go on but it’s time to wrap this up: my gum is pretty much chewed out and it’s making me hungry. My masseters are also shagged so I’ll probably have to eat something soft.
French Fries might be a good option.
The Department of Lateral Thinking 
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