Four-dollar Egg

food shopping gone wrong, food storage gone wrong, snack food gone wrong, supermarket food gone wrong

I don’t know what’s the worst thing about this.

Is it the fact that they’ve boiled and peeled an egg, added some fixin’s, and gave it a 2700% markup?

Is it the over-the-top protein concentration for people who probably don’t need any more protein?

Is it the fact that a naturally-packaged product has been unpackaged and then repackaged with environment-killing plastic?

Or is it that I would probably buy this three times a week if I had ready access?

 

Thanks to Emily Coit for the photo!

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Organic Nut Balls

supermarket food gone wrong

I don’t know about you, but when I’m hankerin’ for balls, I don’t want them to be adulterated. No fillers in the balls please. No preservatives either. The balls should be protein-rich, organic, and ready to eat. Don’t put flour all over the balls, or dip them in soya sauce. Just give me some simple, traditional, nut balls, the way grandma made them. Is that too much to ask for?

 

Thanks to Anne for this contribution!

Pumpkin Pie Popcorn

pumpkin spice gone wrong, snack food gone wrong

I have to confess: this is perhaps the least objectionable of the pumpkin pie trend horrors. Caramel popcorn is already a thing, as awful as I may personally find it. Some stickler for detail decided to call it “pumpkin pie” and note that a seasonal spice blend is really what “pumpkin” denotes today. In fact, I’m willing to say this pumpkin pie popcorn is almost a secret agent, a quiet force of rebellion against ubiquitous pumpkin spice domination.

Or perhaps I’ve totally lost it.

 

Thank you to Usha for this photo!

Macaroni & Cheese Loaf

meat gone wrong, supermarket food gone wrong

You know those times when you want nostalgic carbs, but you also want cold cuts? And you need an efficient product that can deliver both into your insatiable maw at the same time, as part of one sandwich mega-complex? And you know how you despair of ever being able to eat with such pleasure-less calculation? Rest assured, food engineers have developed the solution of your dreams.

 

Thank you, Hailey, for stomaching the sight of this long enough to take a picture.

Energy mix for Women

food advertising gone wrong, snack food gone wrong

Well, given that women are biologically incapable of using the same soap or shaving gel or dumbbells as men (ours have to be pink or we drop them), it stands to reason that we cannot eat the same energy mix as men. Men’s food gives them the energy to build the world, boss people around, criticize stuff, and make up stupid products to sell to women. Women’s snacks make them…. glow.

 

(Thanks for the folks who pointed out that this was a snack, not coffee!)

Thanks to Amy for her fieldwork!

Pumpkin Spice Madeleines

desserts gone wrong, holiday food gone wrong, pumpkin spice gone wrong

I begin to ask myself what it could have been, this powerful taste that brought no proof, but the overwhelming experience of wretchedness, of the degradation of the human soul in this age of unreality, of the putrefaction of good sense and beauty and harmony.

And then I dip the pumpkin spice madeleine in the coffee again, and it all unfolds before me. The flavour, haunting in its stupid familiarity, calls into the recesses of my soul. It reeks of burnt beans and misspelled names and lascivious squirts of vanilla syrup from moldy tubs. Suddenly, just as a cup sleeve of corrugated cardboard that seems flat, given a tiny amount of pressure from the fingers, pops into a round window, an effigy of protection from a boiling beverage, the memory takes shape before my eyes.

I am a teenager, in a suburb with no identifying marks whatsoever, its relentless blandness a war against beauty or sensual experience. I do not really like coffee, but I fill a cup with six packets of sugar to make the bitter liquor somewhat palatable. Soon I discover a way to burn even the last trace of flavour away, a corporate solution for any stubborn flashes of creativity that may remain in our hearts, a final goodbye to subtlety and variation and natural goodness, a toddler-like piefication of the world, and the cheerios and the pasta sauce and the Oreos and the egg nog and the low fat yoghurt rise up from my cup of coffee.

 

 

(Thank you, Ben, for the photo.)