What Were They Smoking? Reflections on Not-So-Smart Food Trends

"Advertising tells you what's wrong with you, and then tells you how to cure it."
--"I'm Still Waiting" by Colin Channer, Got To Be Real (anthology)

Back on the food thing again: as I walked through the grocery store in a sticker shock-induced fog, I did notice some of the oddest things. I've seen some of these things before but, in the grand scheme of things, I had to ask myself: WHY? Who thought these things up? And how much money did they get to do so?

• Salad spray. You've seen these: they are flavored sprays of salad dressing that you spray on your salad. Allegedly, they have a lot less calories than actually pouring regular salad dressing from a bottle onto your salad.

Okay, someone help me out here. First of all, WHY would I want to spray my salad? What sense does that make? Isn't spraying a form of washing? I don't like the taste of lettuce that much that I want to experience it in a way that is one step up from the experience of a rabbit. And the price of that salad spray is comparable to, if not more than, that of an actual bottle of salad dressing.

• 100-calorie packs of cookies and crackers. These are little bags of cookies and crackers that add up to a 100-calorie serving. They are all prepackaged for your convenience in boxes of a certain number of bags.

Okay. Just come out and say that people who eat more than a 100-calorie serving of cookies and crackers are just undisciplined slobs who deserve their extra poundage. Those packs use a reverse psychology type of thing: smaller portions and smaller sizes...mini-cookies instead of a regular-sized cookie. And again, it's a marketing gimmick because if you add up the price of those 100-packs, you might as well buy a regular pack of your favorite snack and bag them up yourself (you can get sandwich bags from the dollar store), especially since those portions of mini-sizes usually are equivalent to the size of two or three regular-sized cookies, anyway. The calories per serving are listed on the back of any food item: do the math yourself and don't be fooled into thinking that eating a bunch of mini-Oreos is going to result in less calories because the cookies are smaller.

• Coke Zero.

Coca-Cola has a soda that has zero calories, which can be yours for the low, low price of about $2.00 per 2-liter bottle, or more if you buy six-packs or 12-packs.

Zero calories. Wow. I can get the same effect from drinking...water! And guess what: water's free (from the tap, that is)!

(this was promptly and hilariously pointed out by that classic movie, The Princess Bride. Watch it sometime).

Folks get caught up in that zero-calorie kick, forgetting about little things like artificial coloring and flavoring, cancer-causing aspartame and its spinoffs, and the teeny fact that Coke products contain phosphoric acid and thus will literally remove the enamel from your teeth...along with rust from a car battery, rings from a toilet, and stains from your clothing. If you don't believe me, do a Google search and find out.

There are probably more things that my fogged brain missed, but these were the ones that stood out. I wonder how many of these gimmicks will fall by the wayside as the recession creeps along? Who knows...maybe one day they will end up on informercials, sandwiched between pleas for Anushka cellulite cream, Ginsu knives, and psychic hotlines.

Thanks for stopping by.

T.