MARK MY WORD: CHEWING THE CUD: IF PEOPLE WERE COWS

When it comes to pigging out, nobody does it better than a dairy cow.

They enjoy chewing the cud with their friends and neighbors.

"They like to eat together," says Richard Dado, a dairy expert at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

Dado and researchers at Michigan State University recently spent weeks keeping a round-the-clock record of how cows chow down. They hooked up computers to three groups of a dozen dairy cows and tracked how much each ate, drank and chewed.

What they found would be enough to send Weight Watchers into a panic.

Cows eat 11 to 12 times a day, and that's not counting the times they order out for pizza. All that daily dining adds up to as much as six hours of munching, during which time they will consume an amount equal to 3 or 4 percent of their body weight.

They also will spend seven or eight hours chewing the cud. That, of course, doesn't leave much time to do anything else.

The amazing thing is that they do all this munching without watching TV.

If people were cows, they would never leave the all-you-can-eat buffet line.

The great thing about cows is they don't worry about overeating or fitting into tight jeans.

You won't find them working out at the gym to lose a few pounds. Eating is their life.

Imagine what success you would have in the restaurant business if you could cater to cows.

You wouldn't need silverware or fancy menus. The cows would be right at home with some simple stalls and milking machines on the table.

Of course, a hamburger probably wouldn't be appealing even if it were covered with special sauce. No self-respecting bovine could eat his beef-herd cousin.

I doubt that cows enjoy being hooked up to computers and monitored for their eating habits any more than we do.

Imagine hooking up people to see just how much they chowed down?

It would start with some light chewing at cereal time. Then, on to a mid-morning snack attack at the candy machine, and a couple of Cokes for good measure.

After that, it's time to munch on a fat-happy burger and some friendly fries.

By mid-afternoon, you're ready to raid the candy counter. Pretty soon, it's dinner time. A large pizza will fill the bill, with some bread sticks and sauce thrown in for good measure. Mid-evening and late-night munching are optional.

And that doesn't even include the Super Bowl party. That's the one day every year where people act just like cows and spend their entire day grazing on Chex Party Mix and other junk food.

My daughter, Becca, likes cows. She spots them in the pastures as we drive down the road.

But she would never make in cow society. She doesn't eat. Pizza? Forget it. Chicken fingers? No way.

At age 2, Becca isn't ready to graze. She seems determined to stay on a liquid diet of chocolate milk and apple juice, with an occasional corn dog thrown in.

She doesn't want to eat three times a day, much less a dozen.

I worry about her food-free ways. But maybe I shouldn't. If she had the appetite of a cow, I'd need a tractor-trailer just to go grocery shopping.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.