Eat it, I dare you.

I don't eat.

I consume.

I regard food, for as long as I can remember, as fuel.

It is the coal in my furnace that provides the steam that gets me from point "a" to point "b."

Except Fritos.

I eat those.

I like those.

I don't eat. My friends and colleagues that actually enjoy and appreciate food hold me in both disbelief and a bit of disdain.

They don't read the same books that I do. They should.

If they did, they would revise their opinion of what appears, daily, on their plate.

I peruse the oddities of history that are often the intellectual grist for graduate students, scholars and individuals who live in caves that read by the light of their Sterno candles.

The 19th and early 20th century is referred, by those students, scholars and hermits, as the time of the "great American stomachache."

As people began to migrate from the rural areas into the great urban hubs, the manner and method by which people accessed nourishment underwent a radical change. With the majority of the domestic population removed from fresh produce, commercial concerns such as Heinz and Armour saw an opportunity to industrialize the production and distribution of food.

Vegetables and meat, now in cans, appeared on the tables of millions of Americans in Boston, New York and Chicago.

Unfortunately, so did the borax, formaldehyde and bleach that was used to preserve those consumables in transit.

Enter Harvey Wiley, a chemist working for the fledgling Department of Agriculture, who waged a two decade battle to have the Federal Government regulate the food industry.

Compiling extensive data sets derived from the testing of live subjects, Wiley's reports were sent to Congress, President Roosevelt and the general public. Clearly, the American food industry was killing, incrementally, the consumer.

Wiley's data and the conclusions derived from that data, as clear as crystal, fell of deaf ears.

Nothing changed.

Until Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle."

Outlining the horrific conditions present in the American meat industry, Sinclair's book galvanized a public who cried out for change.

In 1906, President Roosevelt signed into law the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Data and stories.

We, as development officers, are often told of the importance of "data" when constructing a case for support.

Sometimes, a compelling story will do just fine.

Especially when read when eating Fritos.