Food Free Food

It is truly said that "America is so rich our poor people are obese." That seems to grow more true by the moment for the poor, low-information eaters teetering among us on wobbling platform heels or swooping past us in those little electric carts in the supermarkets.

Conversely is also said that "you can never be to rich or too thin." To confirm that the rich among us are always fooling around with their intake in a binge/purge self-fornication festival. On the one hand many among our rich of pallor have chosen to feed on the lard-laden excrement doled out daily by the current administration and are lining up to by more. On the other hand it would seem that the same wan affluent are lining up to buy food that is so refined and uptight that it has been entirely stripped of what any other culture, any other era, would recognize as... well... food itself. So deep is the affluent American's longing for thin that we have now arrived at "food free food."

It is no surprise to anyone paying attention to the long and unwinding national nutrition neurosis that we need to have some new mountain of diet bullshit to climb every five years of so.

Mount Organic.
Mount Sustainable.
Mount Lo-Fat No-Fat.
Mount Creamy No-Fat.

Yes, it is a libidinal landscape made of featureless false and phony foods. It is a dietary desert of drifting sans. Sans lactose. Sans meat. Sans chicken. Sans land animal. Sans face. Salt free. Sugar free. Gluten free. And, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be, Kosher.

Up and up the bullshit steams in a never ending inward spinning gyre of dietary dreck and nutritional nuttiness so complicated and so intertwined in morality and self-image that there seems to be, at times, nothing left to eat in a country that has more food per capita than any other nation in the history of the world. To quote that great American philosopher, Chester A. Riley, "What a revoltin' development this is."

It now seems to be the case that the food fetish factories of the world, in an effort to separate the American rich from their extra money, have pushed the pedal to the metal now that it is clear the American dollar is about to go the way of the Zimbabwe dollar. Just last month I noticed the store in my neighborhood was selling bags of crispy kelp flakes. That's right. Kelp aka "Seaweed." A bag of these unfrosted flakes weighing in at less than an ounce was being offered up "on sale" for $4.99. A quick bit of grocery store math tells you that some company in collusion with the store seemed to feel it could retail its product for $60 a pound. Sixty smackers a pound. For.... Kelp aka "Seaweed." Weed from the sea..... An offer beyond bogglement.

But I only wandered in that brave new kelpflaked world beyond bogglement for a bit before I came across, just this afternoon, a new product that offered me even less food for more money. It was something called "Crispibread" and its selling points were proudly displayed on the box:

There you have it. To say this food is "vegan" (as it does) is to underestimate its nothingness. Free of nuts. Free of soy. Free of gluten, wheat, dairy, eggs, and that evil life form, yeast. Free of it all. Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free of food at last!

Our long national nightmare is over.

Let's eat.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 28, 2013 7:12 PM