I don’t eat yogurt.

I know what you’re thinking: “Is she seriously going to spend a whole blog post talking about dairy products she doesn’t eat?”

To that I would have to say please try to contain your excitement or you’ll hyperventilate before the end of this article.

First, a brief history of yogurt. Spoiler alert: if you eat yogurt, you may not want to know this because some of it may accidentally be true.

Yogurt is thought to date back to the Neolithic period. This was a period of great innovation, hence the name “Neolithic”. It comes from the ancient words “neo”, meaning “new” and “lithic”, meaning “laser eye surgery”.

It was during this time that animal herders began to milk their animals. I imagine the scene played out like this:

Neolithic Man #1: Sup?

Neolithic Man #2: Not much. Hey, what’s Neolithic Man #3 doing out there?

Neolithic Man #1: Squeezing the underside of his animals to see what comes out.

Neolithic Man #2: What a great idea!

Neolithic Man #1: I don’t know. I think it will be like that time he tried to get us all to stick Q-tips inside the ears of bears to see what would come out. I don’t think it will catch on.

Token Neolithic Woman: I like shoes.

But indeed, herd animal milking did catch on. And when Neolithic man changed from ferret herding to cow herding, milking really took off.

The only problem was that Neolithic man needed a way to carry all this milk around and all his BPA-free animal-skin waterbottles were in the turtle shell sink waiting to be washed. So he grabbed the next best thing: an animal stomach.

Don’t be grossed out: he blew on it first to make sure it was clean before he poured his milk into it. The only problem after that was that Neolithic man decided to leave his animal stomach full of milk where he would be sure to find it, next to his car keys.

But then he couldn’t remember where he left his keys. (Which meant that he couldn’t drive anywhere.  Which not only meant that he didn’t die in a car accident, but also that he got more exercise and thus lived longer and had more offspring than those neolithic people that could always find their car keys. And thus survival of the fittest eventually produced an entire planet full of people who are genetically predisposed to not be able to remember where they left their car keys.)

A few weeks later, this happened:

Neolithic Woman: Neolithic honey, I found your car keys and also an animal stomach full of something thick and lumpy.

Neolithic Man: My milk! (Takes a big mouthful)

Neolithic Woman: Don’t drink that! The expiration date clearly says “Best before June 20th, 6002 BC. That was months ago!”

Neolithic Man: (Swallowing) Yo…ghh…urt. (And he died)

The fact that bits of that story were true is not even the reason I don’t eat yogurt.

What bothers me is that yogurt containers always say “Contains live and active cultures”.

Live.

And active.

And cultural!

Eating things that are still alive is wrong.

And picking on the living things that are particularly active is just adding insult to injury.

And putting cultures in your mouth is tacky.

Even lions won’t go after the most active gazelles. They’ll look for the depressed, lazy, smoker gazelles who are not very active (particularly in their own gazelle culture).

When I go to a restaurant and order a steak and they ask me how I want it prepared, I have never in my life requested, “I’ll have my steak live and active, please.” And then waited for a cow to come charging out of the kitchen area, crashing into other diners’ tables. And then said, “Oh, good. I think my dinner’s coming!” But then found out that the guy at the table next to mine also ordered his steak live and active.

We don’t even eat plants live and active. When you order stuffed squash, they don’t bring you a pot with a squash still growing in it. And the squash is not wearing a headband and holding a racket because it was just taken from the squash courts. (And I’m assuming for the purposes of that joke that squash is an active game. I don’t know how squash is actually played. Much like other strange foreign sports I know nothing about like cricket, curling, and parliament.

Well, I hope you have all learned something here today.

Personally, I don’t remember what my original point was. But if I have only inspired at least one angry rant somewhere on the internet, it was all worth it.