Beauty comes in all forms usually something we truly love or enjoy is viewed, by us, as a something beautiful to behold and cherish. However sometimes beauty is completely unnecessary.

This morning as I shook out some of my cat’s dry food into her dish, I really took the time to look at the perfect little nuggets of brightly coloured kibble. It was formed into shapes of tiny fish, chicken, carrots and a dozen other tempting morsels. The cat put her face in the dish and began chewing and chomping on the food. She would have had the same reaction if the kibble had been in little grey chunks, she wants to eat something that smells good and tastes familiar. She really could care less what it looks like, so the product was obviously designed to appeal my eye, not the cats.

I took a look at the dog kibble too. Same thing, assorted, brightly coloured bits in fancy shapes. Now my dogs, like many others, will eat almost anything they can find. This includes cat vomit, old buried bones and dead things they find on walks. Not nice to think of but very true. I have met many people who say “ Oh Caesar will only eat chicken or minced veal”. Caesar probably has as much class as my two furry friends and will eat anything you give him. However, if he knows that you are willing to pay for veal, than he is not going to eat some cheap kibble that you try to serve him. He will hang on till you relent and give him good stuff. A couple of days of sulking and Caesar will be happy to eat El Cheapo dog diet.

Advertisments for shampoo have indoctrinated us into thinking we need to buy products that contain all sorts of exotic, previously unheard of items. As a child my family all used bar soap to wash our hair and a few drops of vinegar was added to the rinse. Did we miss out on anything? Well we all had clean, shiny hair and isn’t that the objective? Is it really necessary to browse through a whole wall of pretty bottles that promise long, lustrous curls that bounce when we walk? Whatever I use on my hair, it seems to just lie there unless I get creative with hair drier and curling tongues.

This need to sell us pretty things has indoctrinated us into thinking that we really should only buy something appealing. Laundry detergent comes in mega buckets of granules that cost one fourth the price of the pretty, four coloured capsules but the capsules look so nice that we assume they must work better. When we go to the supermarket, the yellow “store’’ brand costs quite a bit less than the multicoloured cans and packages of their competitors but are usually made by the same manufacturer and contain the same product.

If it tastes good and the family enjoys it, who cares about the packaging? There are a couple of products that never seem to be replicated quite as well as the Name Brand product, Corn Flakes for example. Nobody seems to do them as well as Kellogs and I much prefer Campbell’s mushroom soup to the store brand but, on the whole, I do not spend extra money just for a pretty label.

It is the same with people, some of us come in plain brown wrappers but the inside product is as good as, and quite often better, than the ones in a fancier package.