Remember This?

  I do. Well okay, I'm not as ancient as the folks in the image, but I remember the morning ritual. Every day my mum would feed us this wretched goo before she went to work. 

Cod Liver Oil. 

  I'm sure that my mother inherited this method of torture from being fed the substance while growing up in the 1950's, when children could develop Vitamin D deficiencies. My mum was convinced that this stuff would prevent and cure everything. Sure enough, we seldom were sick as kids, and when we were we carefully concealed it lest we be subjected to the other concoctions the matriarch would find in some textbook from the 1920s. We simply didn't DARE to get sick. Getting a cold was something to be feared more than the monster hiding in the closet. 

  But that wasn't the worst part. What I remember most vividly about cod liver oil is the subsequent sea of burps that would taste like rancid fish. Sometimes they would last all day. I'm fairly certain that this is the reason why none of the other kids wanted to sit too close to me - in fact, I was usually in the desk closest to the door. 

  The evil elixir probably did us very little good since dairy products (and just about everything else) were fortified with Vitamin D at the time, but it made my mother feel like a great parent. Nowadays they don't recommend it for children because it can contain a dangerous amount of Vitamin A as well as other toxic chemicals, but some holistic types do say it helps arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. Luckily for those who want to take it, it is now flavoured and comes in capsules. 

  Thank you Google image search for bringing back a memory that was horrifying and is now amusing.