Eat Responsibly

Do you ever eat something without knowing what’s in it?

I definitely don’t.

Granted, we need to rely on food establishments to go through full disclosure and to obey all the health regulations.

We also need to trust that the list of ingredients on packaged goods is comprehensive and accurate.

Still, many of us just like to go ahead and eat stuff.

Jacob Sullum talks about one such incident on Reason.com.

A parent – in this case, also a freelance writer – ate one of her son’s marijuana candy bars without reading the wrapper…

…and she did not like it.

Who is to blame?

My bottom line is this:

It’s your mouth and you need to control what goes into it.

I am not in the liability insurance business, so I fortunately do not have to get involved in crazy cases like people blaming fast food franchises for making the coffee hot.

Instances of “mistaken consumption” do occur…

…but can they affect life insurance eligibility?

Poppy-seed bagels

One famous example is when people test positive for marijuana and claim it stems from eating poppyseed bagels.

I have learned something about this situation. Believe it or not, eating poppyseed bagels could potentially give you a false positive for marijuana!

This doesn’t always happen, but if it does – will a life insurance company rate you as a smoker as opposed to a non-smoker?

I will put it this way:

If you go through full disclosure, and talk freely about your habits, and your lifestyle, and your medical condition, a smart underwriter will be able to put it all together and tell whether it was the bagels or a joint. 🙂

Have you ever had a weird experience like this, where something you ate yielded a really unusual lab result?

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