Sep 15 2006
Doritos – Tasty Snack Or Addictive Foodstuff?
What is it with kids and bright orange food? Is this a natural desire (”the foods kids naturally crave”?) or is it the Profit Hungry Machinations of Big Food/Agribusiness to get Americans addicted to food? Or rather, addicted to Foodstuffs?
Wasn’t that first Cheeto free?
Think about the bright orange foodstuffs you ate THEN that you don’t eat NOW:
* SpaghettiOs. Uh-oh indeed.
* Cheetos. Another -o food.
* Macaroni and Cheese. (Box). OK, so it’s not bright orange when you eat it, but after the macaroni is cooked, what are you adding to it? A packet of bright orange powder. What is this powder? It’s not cheese. It’s cheez. It’s powdered Cheetos. Those broken Cheetos coming out of the Cheeto-matic aren’t going to waste, that’s for sure.
* Pizza. (cheap). This is your basic, cheap pizza. The kind with the cracker-like crust, the edge barely higher than the pizza, the pepperoni (bright orange) leaving orange oil slicks on a gooey cheese-filled plain.
* Doritos . Although this is more of an adolescent food, some children have been known to eat them.
Remember those carefree childhood days? You’d eat ABC gum. Eeeewwww. That’s right. Already Been Chewed. Heck, you’d eat your own boogers.
If given a choice between foodstuffs, you’d eat the MORE ORANGE one:
Crackers:
* Saltines versus Ritz. Winner: Ritz
* Ritz versus Cheez-Its. Winner: Cheez-Its
Cheese:
* Swiss versus cheddar. Winner: cheddar
* American versus cheddar. Winner: cheddar
If presented with 2 equally orange foodstuffs, you’d pick the saltier one.
High Salt. High Fat. High Orange.
Big Food for a Bigger America?
Why bright orange? I mean, this is an orange that hunters wear, it’s the orange of traffic cones. It’s a color only found in nature if that nature is growing around a nuclear reactor.
What’s a foodstuff?
* Foodstuffs are different than food.
* Foodstuffs are snaxs.
* Foodstuffs have trademarked names.
* Foodstuffs may contain food.
* Foodstuffs have names that end with “-o”
Let’s go with this Big Food Big Profit Plot theory:
Step 1: Make the foodstuff bright orange to attract the child’s eye.
Step 2: Appeal to children’s affinity for simple flavors by making the foodstuff either salty or sweet.
Step 3: Add “-o” to the name. Frito. Cheeto. Spaghettio. Oreo.
Step 4: Doritos.
Doritos provide compelling evidence of a Big Food Big Profit Plot. If you had never experienced Steps 1-3 during childhood, would you have ever eaten a Dorito? Imagine opening a bag of Doritos for the first time. The smell is overpowering.
Would you put a Dorito in your mouth if you had never shoveled down Spaghettios as a child? I think not.
By the time you reach adolescence, your hypothalamus has been primed to react favorably to bright orange foodstuffs.
Doritos are the garlic of snack foods. If you eat them, you better pass around the bag and hope everyone else eats them to inoculate themselves. Dorito-breath is distinctive.
Do any of you think foodstuffs are good for you?
If so, stop reading. You’ve been indoctrinated.
Are you addicted to Foodstuffs?
Addiction: persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.
Unscientific polling of 2-3 individuals has given me enough anecdotal evidence to conclude that everyone has eaten Spaghettios as a child, but discontinued ingestion after adolescence. Other foodstuffs continue to be consumed well into adulthood, sometimes against doctor’s recommendations. Hmm. Persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.
I’ve kept foodstuff ingestion to a minimum. Barring Spaghettios, foodstuffs really are tasty snax. If there were no adverse side effects (obesity,heart disease, incontinence) I’d be eating foodstuffs by the bright orange handful.
How much foodstuffs do YOU eat?
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Be afwaid, be vewwy vewwy afraid:
http://www.conagrafoods.com/brands/chef_boyardee/index.jsp
Excerpt:
Chef Boyardee provides the taste that kids crave and the satisfying food parents feel good about serving. Enjoy the fun, feel-good, simple treat that keeps mealtime harmonious. Choose from a variety of flavors of canned pasta, microwaveable cups and bowls, pizza, and dinner kits-family favorites to serve anytime. Boy This (food)* Stuff Is Good!
* inserted for emphasis
OMG, you caught me! I just ate some Doritos this evening! There is definitely something appealing about them that could only be the result of long term brain washing. They stick to your teeth like some kind of denture paste. They smell like powdery cheap pungent spices mixed with something sweet. The bright orange dye is like a badge of dishonor, marking you as a junk food consumer as you sit at your desk and swish water or soda to remove the evidence.
Hey, cheerful – I’d forgotten about how gummy that bright orange spice mix can get, it not only sticks to your teeth, but your fingers. What is so awful is how compelled people are to lick this bright orange stuff OFF of their fingers. I’m one of those Purell-carrying fastidious types and seeing people nibbling and licking their fingers, sometimes going for the “orange goodness” UNDER their nails …. gack.
Writing this article did require some research. Which meant I had to pour myself a glass of red wine. Sipping red wine during research gives my logical brain a false sense of security whereupon it links disparate concepts in order to draw conclusions that sound good, probably taste good, but subsequently, smell bad.
Be that as it may, this methodology works for me.
For example, I sipped and I learned of PimpThatSnack.com. They pimp a Nacho Dorito.
Oh dear, I can’t even start on this one without getting into all my food obsessions…more or less if you avoid eating ingredients you can’t pronounce, you avoid a lot of orange food. I think orange is still better than all the blue food they market to kids these days, because it’s possible to use “natural” orange coloring if you really try, whereas I think blue is pretty much always carcinogenic.
Jill: I’m guessing this means you’re not eating a lot of snack items at your place? Well, except for the occasional junk food binge? I don’t have children and I’m seldom in the processed foods section of any store so the “Blue Food” didn’t even register but now I realize that I have seen new colors – oh, yeah, that’s right, Blue was the new color introduced for M&M candies! How could I forget THAT!
Then blue Jell-o came out, too.
I sorta collect those M&M figures – just the one on the Christmas canes but finally said, “ENOUGH!” It was a cheap thing to collect and fun and of course, chocolate was involved but eh, too many of those things.
What about blueberries? They could be used for the basis of the natural color!