Love this comment from @Meowser:

“I too have a neurosis about “not wasting food,” I have a hard time getting it through my calcified skull that food wasted inside the body is no different materially from food wasted outside of it. ”

I don’t need to clean my plate? What? Wish someone had told me that when I was a child.

I have had my kitty since before she was completely weaned (a rescue). She knew what to do with kitty kibble, but she couldn’t quite bite down on it correctly, so the whole first week she was with me, she licked wet kibble off my fingers. After that, she managed kitten kibble pretty well, so we made sure to keep her bowl filled and let her eat as she was hungry.

At first, she’d gorge herself whenever I filled her bowl. Then she began to feel more safe in the idea that food was always there for her, and she wouldn’t go hungry. So she’d eat a couple of bites after I filled her dish, then a little bit here and a little bit there throughout the day as she was hungry. Now she’s gotten to where she will wind herself around my ankles when I fill her food dish (she clearly likes the idea of getting her dish filled), but she might or might not actually eat anything then.

I wondered why her habits had changed. Was it just a product of her getting older? Then I realized — she had moved toward eating only in response to her hunger. As a starved kitten, she glomped down food out of fear (borne out by experience) that the food might not be there later. After that, she felt compelled to eat when the food came, but didn’t necessarily eat much right then. Now, when the food comes, she thanks me for putting it in her dish, but feels no need to actually eat unless she’s hungry.

The funny thing is, when her eating was more disordered, the vet was very worried about her weight. She was either too thin or too fat, and seemed to never find a point of equilibrium. The vet warned me about not letting the cat have “free choice eating”, because it would lead to a tubby tabby with health problems. I figured she was still growing, and kept on letting the cat eat whenever she felt like it. Now, her health and weight are just fine, due (IMHO) in no small part to having her choose when to eat and how much.

So whenever I get that OMG BAD FOOD craving, I think about my cat. If that cat were a person, she’d have no problem eating half an Oreo, or half a dozen –depending solely on what she was really hungry for. To a cat there is “food” and “not food” — the idea of food carrying moral freight would be absurd.

Maybe its silly, but I find that my eating habits are less disordered the more I try to emulate my cat.

I’d write more, but oops, I think that’s the sound of some chips rattling around in the back of my cupboard, and lord knows I can’t sleep at night if there are chips in the house.

Has anybody else seen this project? It’s marginally interesting to me, but the “Not so Little Riding Hood” shot and the ignorant comments that follow do a lot to take away from the photographer’s proclaimed goal.