Snack Foods

Guest blog by Andy the Uber Nguyen Kim.

I am so grateful Tino has allowed me to guest blog on his masterpiece. I mean, I would never have a blog myself, since it is something only dorks with a lot of free time actually do. Think about this – who actually blogs? I’ve concluded there are two categories of folks: people that are bored after playing online games and History majors who haven’t found a job yet because the history factory stopped hiring in 1492. So I get so stay cool (because it’s not my blog) and yet have a forum for spreading my wisdom. Hopefully, I won’t offend too many people and get a chance to guest blog regularly.

Since this is a food blog, I thought I’d comment on snack foods. I love snacking—growing up my parents would let us loose in the grocery store so my brother and I could find our “8 o’clock snack.” See, my parents weren’t exactly the healthiest eaters and they didn’t promote that organic crap. This is why I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol (additionally, I am blessed with other genetic faults such as being short, missing some teeth, having the same vertical leap as a pygmy hippo, and the same vision as Daredevil—I’m still waiting to discover my latent mutant superpower). I was a fat kid; I’ll admit it. I almost wore husky sized pants- I probably should have because I recall having many, many stomach aches from stuffing my gut into “regular” pants. There’s a lot of pride in being “regular” versus “husky.” I also never wanted to wear pants where my waist was bigger than the length (to this day, I wear a 32/32 even though 32 is a bit long for my inseam).

Back to snacking- I remember back then, there were just three types of potato chips: Sour Cream and Onion, Barbeque and Plain. (Incidentally, Pringles are not potato chips http://tristatehomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=17251) Now who developed these flavors? Seriously, sour cream and onion? Basically, this meant you would stink for hours. Was garlic and limburger cheese not available in the taste lab that day? And barbeque? I guess they came up with Barbeque because “Orange-colored” was not a flavor. And “Plain” was the codename for just plain salty. But they tasted soooo good. I remember licking the chips before eating them. Isn’t that what matters when eating food—taste?

So flash forward 20 or so years, and what has happened? The surgeon general has decided smoking, doing crack while pregnant, and excessive drinking are bad for us. AND he/she/it decided that potato chips must taste like starchy styrofoam. Why? Who knows—probably because whatever was in potato chips that made them taste sooo good caused cancer, bubonic plague, or the clap. But who cares? Everyone knows if it tastes good, it will kill you. If the government must, just put a big sticker on it: “The shit that makes this taste good might kill you.” Now we’re stuck with some organic potato chip made by some smug hippy in upstate New York. The thing tastes like cardboard (and not even salty cardboard!). Screw you hippy—I’m running you over in my SUV that gets 12 miles to the gallon. I’m going to drive with the air conditioning on and the windows down. Global warming is a figment of Al Gore’s imagination.

I say bring back the good taste and let us at it. Eventually, people that could survive the bad stuff in potato chips would continue to live and the weak would die (I count myself as a likely candidate for the weak group)—but society as a whole would get stronger and adapt. I believe Darwin called this natural selection. Everyone wins with more transfats and preservatives. Give us the tasty stuff. While we’re on natural selection, let’s remove the “no diving” signs on shallow pools and the sign that tells you not to stick your hands near moving lawnmower blades.