Today's blog will be a little different.  No philosophy, no show reviews.  Instead, a cautionary tale from my past, and a little helpful advice for a healthier life.

So, I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Instant Breakfast.  It’s been “Carnation Breakfast Essentials” for some years now, but it will always be Instant Breakfast to me.  It’s a powered chocolate milk nutritional drink/meal replacement.  I started drinking it as a little kid because I was such a picky eater that it was difficult for my parents to get me to eat enough of a variety to get adequate vitamins and minerals.  I loved the stuff, and it became a staple of mine for my entire life.  I drink a glass of it almost every day.  Probably six days a week.  Been doing that for my entire life.  I probably don’t need to as I now eat a decent variety, but I absolutely love the taste, and it’s healthy, so why not.

In my mid twenties, about a decade ago, I started to notice that my beloved IB (Instant Breakfast) was starting to not taste as good.  It was very subtle at first—so subtle that I would notice it one time and not another, and I usually thought that it was just my imagination, so I’d shrug it off.

It’s at this point that I should point out that I had a designated IB cup.  It was my favorite cup, and the one I liked to use for IB.  You might be able to see where this is going.  So, I might be weird this way, and this is probably just some autistic thing, but I have different dishes and cups that I like to use for specific things.  I don’t just grab random dishes.  I have a designated water cup, soda cup, juice cup, pasta bowl, cereal bowl, etc. So, I had been using the same IB cup for years.  It was a white plastic cup.

Over time, I gradually noticed the IB tasting worse and worse until I could no longer wave it away as imagination.  It probably took a couple of years, but it finally got to the point where I just couldn’t drink it.  I would take one swig and just feel sick, spit it out and dump the rest.  I was really bummed.  I briefly wondered if they’d changed the recipe, but that wouldn’t explain why it was so gradual.  I also knew that our milk couldn't be a variable either, because that also wouldn't explain why it was gradual.  Plus, we rotate between milk brands, depending on what's on sale, so there was no way that could be it.  It was a slow, steady decline.  I was so oblivious and blinded by routine that I didn’t notice what was going on.

Then it hit me like bolt of lightning.  I was struck with simultaneous horror and relief at figuring it out.  I mixed up some IB (from the same box as one that had tasted bad the day before) in a glass—an honest to goodness glass, made out of GLASS.  It instantly tasted delicious again—the same old IB I knew and loved.  That old white plastic cup had degraded and started leeching chemicals into my IB.  It was so f*cking obvious, too. That plastic was soft and disgusting.  If you scratched it with your fingernail, you would actually get nasty plastic film caked under your nail.  How did I not notice?!  I shudder to think how much plastic I ingested over the years.

The lesson?  Use glass and ceramic dishes and cups.  Plastic is okay for dry food, but make sure it’s high quality, and nasty chemical-free plastic (which is probably all they make nowadays.)  I still use plastic plates sometimes for dry stuff, like a pile of chips or crackers, or if I just need something to hold underneath my ice cream bar in case it drips, but for liquids or anything moist (soup, pasta, mac n cheese, etc), only use glass or ceramic.  Basically, you only want to use glass and ceramic for anything that can absorb residue from the plastic.

I've only used glass for my IB ever since (as well as other other liquidy things), and it's always tasted great.  Heed my warning--never drink out of plastic again!  And share this advice with everyone you know!

I told my friends this tale, and one of them had the perfect response.  He said, "Yikes.  That's some HP lost to poison damage!"