Food?

What exactly is food? I mean, I know it is what you eat, or at least I think it is. But a recent trip to the grocery store has challenged my heretofore naive notions about food. The label above started me on my precipitous decline.

Potted meat food product. What exactly is this? Does this even start as food? I mean, what exactly is a “food product?” Is a food product one step removed from food? I can think of food by-products, but what is a food product? If it was simply food, they wouldn’t have to call it a “product,” now would they?

For that matter, what is “meat food?” Really. Meat, by definition, is food. But “meat food” must mean something different. “Meat Food Product” means something different than simply “Meat Food.” Now add Potted. Potted....Meat...Food....Product. Why would you have to “pot” the meat food product? (Unless it had a certain gelatinous quality that refused to hold a shape of its own.....yum...)

It would be a joke, except that it really exists. Can you imagine marketing Potted Meat Food Product? Someone somewhere has that job, and seeing as how you can get a can of that junk anywhere, they must be doing a good job. Just think. When they named the product, someone was deep in thought and stated, “why not call it Potted Meat Food Product.” Everyone else agreed that that was the best name available!

As my mind was spinning thinking about gelatinous meat food products, I ran into the dairy aisle. What did I see? Diet Imitation Margarine.

Let’s see. Margarine is imitation butter. Imitation margarine is imitation imitation butter. Not only that, it is diet imitation imitation butter. At what point does what you are doing become non-food? The way I see it, diet imitation imitation butter is thrice removed from real food. At that point, whatever you’re sticking in your mouth does not count as food. By the way, stick your diet imitation margarine out in the woods one Saturday. Come back next week and you will find the entire tub of the stuff untouched and probably even unaffected by the weather. If ants and animals won’t eat it, what does that say about it? I’ll tell you what....it ain’t food.

A little farther down, I picked up some Pasteurized Processed Cheese Food Spread. Ok. When it has to use the word “food” in the title, that must be a sure sign that it’s not! Cheese itself is a food, but what is “cheese food?” I guess that they’re trying to tell us that it is cheese put into some other type of “food.” Yet, they don’t really tell us what this “food” is. Then, they take the Cheese Food and process it some way. Great. Then they pasteurize it. Really great. I guess pasteurizing is supposed to put us at ease. Let’s put it all together: ....Pasteurized....Processed....Cheese....Food...Spread. Oh yea, I forgot that after all of the pasteurizing and processing of the cheese food, that is still not enough. There is still the ability to make it a “spread.”

Man. My head was hurting as I stopped to pick up some Sweet N Low. A “sweetener.” Again, does anyone trust something “sweet” that can sit on the counter for 100 years without a single ant even considering eating it? Nevertheless, we suck the stuff down with coffee every day. We should learn from the insect kingdom on this one!

Maybe I’m thinking too much. Pass the “food” and Ritz Crackers! Let me spread some potted meat food product on some of the crackers, diet imitation margarine on some of the others, and pasteurized processed cheese food spread on the rest. I’ll wash it down with coffee and sweet-n-low.....Just think, somewhere, sometime, a laboratory rat died for me.


Blawgerman