All Natural or Not

I have noticed that labels scarcely tell eaters the truth.

Instead of saying 'this muffin is nothing but processed flour, lard and a ton of white sugar guaranteed to jack up your blood sugar level to "coma" within 10 minutes', the label casually disguises the truth in vague terms which would confuse most educated people.

The muffin is a single muffin in a little decorated plastic bag.

One would think that one muffin is for one person.

But...if you look at the sinister label, the minute giblety writing on the tiny nutrition facts section tells an entirely different story.

The label says the muffin in said package is one which serves 2.5 people.

Do what???

Does that mean I can cut it up into 2.5 servings and share? NOT WITH MY MUFFIN, DUDE! Get your mitts off and buy your own! Muffin money is rare and not to be used to buy muffins for trifling people who didn't plan ahead with their own allowances and found money.

I am left to ponder why ONE muffin should serve more than one person at all.

In the first place, who truly wants half a muffin with a thumbprint on the top and a ragged crumbly edge which is guaranteed to leave that freshly ironed shirt looking like you slept on a bed of cornflakes while wearing it the night before.

And in the second place, anyone who would be willing to take said raggedly torn muffin must know you well enough to know that you should have bought carrot sticks instead.

Then, we are left with the horrible thought of just who the half a person is who gets the remaining particle of muffin.

Did they get run over by a train while napping on the tracks and become bisected in some odd sci-fi moment that allows them to live with only half a body? Half a head...less teeth to floss... half a chest, if they are female there will be a lot of questions when it's time to buy a new bra... one shoe...thrift stores can help there, they always seem to have an ample supply of odd shoes.

In any case, do we really want to watch someone with half a mouth chew up their muffin?

I digress.

Back to the naturalness of the muffin.

If you have to tell me in chemical terms what I am eating, I am much more inclined to believe my food to be a by-product of Dr. Frankenstein's lunch experimentation. Just what was Igor doing with that jar of pickles and that power strip?

Why can't food just say the truth: "I am horrible for your diet, I will load 10 pounds upon your already burdened frame and I taste better than manna in the wilderness to a starving man."

Or better yet, "Just like the incredible, fluffy, homemade 3-layer cakes that Sister Brown made at church socials, I have NO calories and NO after effects!" (yeah, I wish...*sigh* those days are gone...).

Instead, our food has gone 'Hollywood' and now uses flashy and revealing packaging to disguise the truth. Even Twinkies have been compelled to 'go light'. How sad.

Back years ago, there was this naturalist dude on TV advertising a cereal product called "Grape Nuts" which had nothing to do with grapes and everything to do with gross. It was the cereal old people ate. It was touted as being an all natural product that was 'healthy' and apparently reminded their spokesman, Euell Gibbons, of eating the seeds and bark from some tree in the mountains.

I have to say the ads themselves were fodder for comic acts and snarky remarks among the younger set to whom digestive complaints were not yet reality. I mean who wanted all natural when it tasted so bad?

No amount of sugar made Grape Nuts palatable. No amount of added fruit made the cardboard taste disappear. For better or worse, the all natural claims of Grape Nuts simple made young people gag and old people regular.

I realize truth is at a premium now, moreso than at any other time in our history. Everything has an angle, people can "spin it" to mean whatever they should have said when they weren't
shooting their mouth off saying something entirely different.

But adding the words "all natural" to something that is disgusting only fools the nuts...and we ain't talking Grape Nuts here... people who believe that everything must be tagged as a natural product in order to sell have forgotten the best truth of all.

We are, ourselves, no longer 'all natural'. We enhance our beauty and appeal with scents and lotions, potions and pills guaranteed by some faceless person to make us something that we aren't.

Oh. I get it now.

Our food has just started to match us. "All Natural".

Run now...while there is still time.