Food Blog

I have to comment on this The best, worst of new grocery products in 2004 article. While I don’t have any issues with their worst list (just what is the point of low carb ice cream and chocolate bars?) I have to take issue with their best of list.

It’s full of things like packaged apple slices, packaged salads, individually wrapped 100 calorie packs of cookies, lemon juice in jars and rice that takes 90 seconds to cook but is 15 times more expensive than regular rice.

Is this what we should be praising? Should we really be clamoring for products that we can cook without even owning a knife or a stove? Are we that lacking in self control and so full of guilt that we can’t buy cookies without paying a premium, and accept the waste of extra packaging because we’re afraid of what might happen if we buy 2 dozen of them?

I know convenience is important for busy parents, but for God’s sake, can we really not cut up an apple by ourselves anymore? If our time is really so expensive that we need to pay a ridiculous price because we don’t have 15 minutes to make rice, we may want to figure out what the hell we’re doing with our time.

A few items that really pissed me off:

“Earthbound Apple Slices. Slices of crisp apples packed in individual bags to make eating fruit on-the-go easy and appealing.”

Never mind the stupidity of paying for someone else to slice your apples for you, you might want to think about what happens to those individual bags once they become “Earthbound” as opposed to what happens to an apple core and its seeds.

“Sunrich Naturals Frozen Edamame. Fresh soybeans taken out of their pods, bagged and frozen so they’re now as easy to enjoy as frozen peas.”

Guess what? I hate frozen peas. (I’ve edited out a certain curse gerund in that sentence that would describe just how much I f’ing hate them.)

“Keebler Sandies Fruit Delights Shortbread Cookies. Despite the name, these taste more like delicious little strawberry or apple pies. Like pie, they’re very crumbly and therefore not ideal for dashboard dining.”

Guess what? Maybe you wouldn’t be worried about whether you need to buy 100 calorie packs of cookies if you weren’t “dashboard dining”. The only times you should be eating in your car is when there’s a tray hooked on to your door’s window that someone on roller skates delivered or when you’re on a long trip on an interstate. Then you can have a cookie.

“Nature Path Flax Plus. Chock-full of the whole grains and fiber that make breakfast cereals worth eating. Tasty too.”

This might be really good, I’ll never know though, since the name itself makes me wonder what flax plus would do to my internal “nature path”.

“Birds Eye Voila! Chicken & Sausage Tuscano. A restaurant-quality dish featuring big pieces of peppers, mushrooms, chicken and fennel-accented sausage in a delicious, medium-spicy red sauce. It’s pasta-less because it was designed with low-carb dieters in mind. But I’d gladly boil water for one of the best frozen dinners I’ve ever eaten (and this is the voice of experience speaking).”

By restaurant quality you’re talking about Olive Garden right? I thought so. Because they serve pre-prepared frozen dinners too.

Link found via Sour Patch, one of the good, new food blogs I was about to list before I plunged into this rant.