Area Woman Blows Gasket (2 page)

The Fastest Food in the West

The other day at the supermarket I noticed that boxes of microwave popcorn had been gathered up and plunked down in a sale
bin near the checkout lines, as if on clearance. This wasn't surprising, given the headlines then blaring about microwave
popcorn flavor vapors, which made everyone who had been attracted to the choice of instant popcorn suddenly run away.

What in God's name are "flavor vapors," you might ask. And I answer: I don't quite know. I can only say that the headlines
referred to two employees at a food plant in Jasper, Missouri, who successfully sued International Flavors and Fragrances
Inc. in 2003 for exposing them to a chemical that caused lung disease, and this chemical was involved in the production of
synthesized flavors. The case provoked concern by authorities, worried, for instance, that the "butter flavor" fumes released
when one opened a bag of microwaved popcorn could be hazardous to consumers who inhaled them.

Do you follow? Chemical plus fume equals clearance bin.

I don't know what they'll decide in the end, but meanwhile I can't help feeling blessed. I have narrowly averted the potential
fate of microwave popcorn consumers simply because I've always felt that microwave popcorn was the world's most preposterous
invention.

Here is how you make popcorn: Heat up corn kernels in some oil until they explode. Salt to taste.

Try this in a pot. You'll be surprised to find that it works exactly the same way as in a bag. Only it costs less. A bag of
corn kernels will set you back roughly a dollar, and yield . . . I don't know . . . maybe twenty pots' worth of popcorn. The
microwave version offers three bags for three times as much money. Is that convenience or bamboozlement?

Ah, but you want "butter flavor"? Actually, it's not a problem to achieve butter flavor with popcorn. Try melting butter!
Pour it on your popcorn!

Not being a food historian, I don't know when, exactly, we started falling for the overblown seductions of food efficiency.
Was it in the era of TV dinners? Of instant mashed potatoes? All I can tell you is that at some point we fell so hard for
the pitch that we lost our capacity to do common evaluative comparisons. Microwave popcorn. Hmmm. Three dollars and three
minutes. Regular popcorn. Hmmm. One dollar and three minutes. Of course, I would be an idiot if I wasn't a fan of laborsaving
devices. I support improvements on the butter churn. But there were inventions along the way, one suspects, between the butter
churn and organic butter-flavored spray-on Canola oil that could have ended the labor issue in a satisfactory way. Cut blocks
of butter on sale at the market would suffice, I would think, without plunging everyone's lives into perfidy and ruin.

Similarly, I don't want to keep egg-laying hens in my yard— how awkward— but still I have to say: Innovators, calm down. It
isn't that arduous to drop store-bought eggs in boiling water and then peel them. I'm not convinced by the new Burnbrae Farms'
offering of already boiled eggs, now available by the half-dozen in the dairy section of my local supermarket. The pitch is
elusive. No pot of water necessary! No peeling! Simply "rinse eggs before using."

Thanks, but no.

Tempting as it may be, I would have to be unconscious or hog-tied to benefit from that level of convenience in my kitchen.
On the other hand, in the name of journalism, I decided to see if I could, in fact, prepare an egg salad sandwich while lying
facedown on the floor. So I took those already boiled eggs home and mixed in mayo from my new squeeze bottle of Hellmann's—
no need for a knife! Just flip the cap open with your teeth, squeeze onto rinsed eggs, plant your face in the bowl, and stir
with your nose! Eat with your mouth!

Too lazy to cook with pots? Afraid of microwave flavor vapors? Try our new, precut roast chicken in a thermo-lined sack! Just
tie to your head and slurp!

There is a conflagration in the marketing, you have probably noticed, between the idea of efficiency and the myth of being
on the go. Marketers don't want to suggest that people are lazy, so instead they characterize us as cheerfully active. Too
busy and hurried to eat the old-fashioned way. Need feed bags now. No time for utensils. Gimme one of those yogurts in a tube.

This is how we arrive at oatmeal that is no longer merely instant but also portable, in the form of "Oatmeal to Go Breakfast
Bars," currently being advertised on TV by depicting someone jogging while eating a bowl of hot oatmeal. Like they can't get
up five minutes earlier to turn on the kettle? Or consider Kraft Foods' latest innovation, Easy Mac. Kraft long ago usurped
the world's simplest dinner, of boiled macaroni with cheese sauce. But wait! It turns out that maybe Kraft Dinner was too
time-consuming. So the kitchen geniuses at Kraft slaved away, sensitive to the harried lives of working mothers and tube-fed
teenagers, and came up with EasyMac. Save minutes! Just stick the ingredients together in the microwave!

Not that they are abandoning their original KD. Far from it, there is a new ad campaign for that, too, where teens toss KD
into a blender and then slurp the liquefied results from a tube.

To Market, to Market, 'Cause I'm a Fat Pig

A few years ago, pundits like me were warning of the logical extremes to which health fanaticism would lead. "What's next?"
we demanded. "Lawsuits against the purveyors of fattening foods?"

We were merely being rhetorical. We certainly didn't hope to be prescient. So it was with some alarm that I reported the launching
of a class-action lawsuit in New York in 2002 by a gaggle of plump people with heart disease, against a group of fast-food
franchises that stood accused of giving them heart disease by making them plump.

Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, and McDonald's were being sued for failing to inform people that their burgers, fries, and buckets
of chicken were fattening. (Note that KFC no longer goes by the name Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now the
F
can stand for something else, by inference, such as Fowl.)

The most publicly ridiculed among the plaintiffs of this lawsuit was Caesar Barber of the Bronx, who sat for an interview
with Fox News that I watched after an episode of
Fear Factor
in which four people chewed live crickets in order to win a new car. Barber explained that he had had a heart attack as a
result of the sneaky salesmanship at Burger King, et al.

"There was no fast food I didn't eat," Barber said, "and I ate it more often than not because I was single, it was quick,
and I'm not a very good cook." Barber had already, perhaps unconsciously, built an air of haplessness into his public persona.
No admission there of actually just loving double cheeseburgers and crispy fries. He was lonely! In a hurry! Couldn't figure
out his microwave! The manufacturers of Kraft Dinner and McCain's Superfries must have been wiping their brows with a towel.
What if Barber had sorted out how to boil water or turn his oven to 400 degrees?

Offering a defense where none was really necessary, a Wendy's employee told the
Boston Globe
at the time that she kept a stack of nutrition guides on hand, and her customers were free to eat the stuffed baked potatoes
and fresh salads instead of ordering a combo.

I never did see any comment from McDonald's. Doubtless the fellows at the head office were sitting around in a collective
clinical depression after settling a multimillion-dollar lawsuit earlier that year for falsely claiming that their French
fries were "vegetarian."

Not surprisingly— for those of us who think that the logical extremes in society play out like slow-motion train wrecks— new
lawsuits were quickly afoot against the manufacturers of sugar-free aspartame, high-fat health-food cheesies, alcohol companies,
alternative medicine proprietors, and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

My favorite suit was brought by Meredith Berkman of New York City in 2002 against Robert's American Gourmet Foods, for mislabeling
the fat content in Pirate's Booty, a pious health store staple for neurotic parents whose children want cheesies.

Pirate's Booty, which my son tends to eat as an entree, is a pretend-cheesie product made of puffed rice and real cheddar
cheese, as opposed to cornmeal and plutonium. Berkman headed a class-action suit accusing the company of misleading the public
by labeling Pirate's Booty as "low-fat." Plaintiffs sought $50 million for "emotional distress and nutritional damage," according
to news reports.

Nutritional damage?
If these people can be emotionally distressed and nutritionally damaged by a rice puff, imagine what would happen to them
in a war. Try suing the government of Sudan for forcing you to eat nothing but boiled shoe leather until everyone in your
extended family dies.

Quarrels rage unabated in nutritional circles about whether carbohydrates or fats are the culprits in obesity, while potato
growers try desperately to cultivate low-carb potatoes even as the purveyors of ice cream continue to stock the shelves with
fat-free vanilla. Not even the traditional health food pioneers, whom we fondly call "the granola type," are immune. Britain's
Food Commission recently announced that most brands of granola are fattening. Ha, ha. Here we have the eponymous health nut
pooh-poohing the likes of burger-chomping Caesar Barber, and it turns out there are more grams of fat and sugar in some leading
granola cereals than one finds in a slice of chocolate cake.

At least anti-smoking research is coherent. The food fights are a mess.

"McDonald's Corp.," declared a 2003 press release, "has enlisted the aid of Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer Bob Greene to
promote an adult version of the Happy Meal, the fast-food giant's latest effort to offer healthier products. Instead of Happy
Meal standards like a burger and a toy, the new Go Active meal will include a salad, an exercise booklet and a pedometer meant
to encourage walking."

That's inventive of them, don't you think? Mind you, the skeptical part of my brain does wish to point out that McDonald's
has now officially lost its way in the world of marketing, if it fails to understand that an exercise booklet makes a meal
about as happy as being offered roast chicken with a hair shirt. Needless to say, if you want to make adults happy, give them
a baby-sitting coupon. Or a joint. On the other hand, the meal has been endorsed by
Oprah Winfrey
s personal trainer. That's a Go Active meal with a whiff of glamour. A hint to all future Caesar Barbers. Fat? You coulda
had a pedometer.

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

When people quit smoking, I strongly recommend that they join a gym. That way they can feel good about quitting and also feel
an extra thrill of righteousness about making a monthly donation to a fitness center they never attend. It works really well.
Certainly in my case, after I foreswore my beloved Marlboro Lights and then immediately, with bright and happy intent, bought
a pass to the YWCA, I felt marvelous. I don't regret the fifteen pounds I've gained since then. Not for a minute. Because,
think about it. I
quit smoking
after twenty-three years! If part of that difficult, painful process involves throwing good money after bad, month after
month after month, not going to the gym while slowly inflating like a hot air balloon, then so be it. I deserve to cut myself
some slack. Or at very least to buy roomier pants.

By the way, I have a theory about the dramatic and unprecedented rise in obesity in our society, which is that the trend corresponds
with the decline in smoking. Everyone is stopping their filthy habit and getting fat, just like me! Consider the math. In
1975, just under half of us smoked and less than a quarter of us were obese. Thirty years later the numbers have neatly reversed
themselves. The hysterias have supplanted one another. Oh no! We're fat! We're all going to die! We quit smoking, but it doesn't
matter, because we're fat and we're all going to die!

For a while I did try to curb my thigh inflation by playing tennis. The idea of this game entered my life in the excited yet
nerve-racking run-up to quitting smoking, when everyone advised me to develop a new lifestyle with different rituals. It was
a period not dissimilar to pregnancy, when those around me crowed with pleasure and offered a nostalgic knowledge.

"Oh! You're going to have so much more energy, you won't believe it!"

"You will be able to smell again, it's the greatest thing."

"Kissing tastes nicer."

"You just feel so much better about yourself. So much better."

I was encouraged to imagine stuff to do every hour and every minute and every second of every day that was jarringly new and
that I wouldn't associate with smoking. I compiled a list. Don't go to bars. Join the gym. Don't go out for dinner. Sign up
for tennis. Shun coffee shops. Arrange for dance lessons. Avoid writer friends. Hang out with joggers. Keep emotional turmoil
to a minimum. And for God's sake, Patricia,
don't sit at your laptop and write another book.

Originally, of course, my plan was to knock myself unconscious with a mallet shortly after breakfast each day. But Ambrose
felt supportive of tennis, having himself played all through high school. One day, as we found ourselves in Toys "R" Us, beating
our zombie-like children back with sticks from the shelves, Ambrose cried, "Hey, look, they've got tennis rackets!" and grabbed
one, which he threw into the cart with the Play-Doh and dinosaurs and Junior Scrabble. "It's on sale," he added. "This is
actually a great price for a racket."

You know, you worry that these things are going to be inordinately complicated, these changes in lifestyle, and it's so pleasing
and surprising when they're not. Who would have imagined that it would be easy peasy to transform myself from Christopher
Hitchens into Billie Jean King in a happy matter of days? Of course, it's not that simple for the naturally sports-hostile,
but I had always been athletic. It was a talent I had surpressed by sighing, swirling ice cubes in my cocktail, and smoking
for decades. But it was still in me, the God-given grace, coordination, and gumption. I just wouldn't have talked myself back
into it but for Ambrose and his casual, comfortable sports savoir faire.

The next weekend I donned my tennis whites, stuffed a tube of balls into my purse, grabbed the sheathed racket, and headed
off to the Cottingham Tennis Club on a leafy residential street in wealthy North Toronto. Look at me, off to play tennis!
I parked my cherry-red Mazda and hopped out, experimenting with my level of energy. Could I reclaim the happy skip of my youth,
or was that too wishful? I was worried, in truth, that I didn't have the right shoes on. When I entered the white wooden clubhouse
lit with sunshine, I asked the resident tennis pro at the club, a young man who was as handsome and cheery as Reggie in the
Archie comics.

"You're fine," he said. Then he paused midstride out the clubhouse door and looked at me more hesitantly. "I guess you realize
that you've got a children's racket?" I stared at the object hanging from my shoulder, shocked. "Do I? My husband bought it
for me." My husband's
a guy.
They know their sports.

"Where did he buy it?" the pro asked, curious.

"Oh," the answer thwacked me in the face. "Well. Toys 'R' Us." Even as the reply came out of my mouth, my face began burning
and my game partner, S., brayed with laughter.

What could I do? We were there. We were dressed. So, I played. I went out there onto that clay court shaded by maple trees,
between a hard-fought doubles game involving a quartet of age-defiant seniors, and a singles match between two strapping college
men straight out of
Chariots of Fire.
I strode out with dignified determination, refusing to concern myself with the pointed stares of tennis snobs, and whacked
at the balls with my dorky plastic racket until I ruined my wrist, which took about fifteen minutes. After that, I found it
difficult to exaltedly fling myself into the sport of tennis because I kept not having time to get to a proper store and buy
a proper racket.

Nevertheless, I did alter my routine. There was still that pressing necessity of the ex-smoker, to climb the walls of one's
house, bug-eyed, and head out the window and onto the roof, there to either jump off or find a new mode of being in the world.

Now when I rise in the morning and pour my coffee, instead of reaching for a cigarette, I whip out a pen and write a to-do
list that invariably starts with the phrase: "Go to the gym" and then continues, in parentheses, underlined twice, "or at
least resume tennis." You
loser.

Then I eat a lot.

So what has kept me on the wagon, you might well ask. It is no easy task, I am telling you, and that is not because I am an
immoral half-demon in lust with debauchery. It is because nicotine is very (squared) addictive. Only three percent of smokers
quit successfully on a given try.
Three percent.
That is why it's taken half a century to reduce the smoking rates. But there's a reason for this. It's because nicotine is
very, very, very, very addictive, I don't know if I mentioned that. The brain thinks that nicotine is super. Jettison tobacco
from your mind and just think nicotine. Nicotine, nicotine, nicotine, nicotine. What a nice, subtle drug. It doesn't make
you paranoid, like pot, or violent, like alcohol, or aimlessly emotive like Ecstasy. It sharpens your memory and clarifies
your thoughts. It soothes your anxiety and lifts your depression. In pure form, nicotine is efficacious, and just about as
harmless and as addictive as caffeine.

What to do? Unhitch it from its lethal harness, and in a rational society, such as Sweden, that would just be a matter of:
Off you go and have fun with your Nicorettes gum or what have you. The Swedes have figured this all out and cut their smoking
rates in half by introducing— among many other things— Snus, a form of miniature nicotine tea bag that former Swedish smokers
place between their gums and their lips.

Since I quit, my cousin has fallen off the wagon and done a face plant and so have two of my friends. I figure this is because
none of them opted, as I did, for Nicotine Replacement Therapy. For Snus and its variants. Also known as NRT. Smoker's methadone.
The patch, the gum, the spray, the inhaler, the lozenge, the mallet. To quit smoking on the first try, you must surround yourself
with these NRTs until you're swimming in the stuff, never more than six inches away from a dose of nicotine. If you don't
believe me, ponder the three percent statistic I just cited.

This is the secret of my success, and I wish to emphasize the word
secret
because very few people have figured out the usefulness of NRTs, particularly here in Toronto where very few are available.
Health bureaucrats haven't noticed, yet, that if you immerse ex-smokers in a vat of liquid nicotine forever, they will remain
content. Dose them, and they will fail to succumb to cancer, heart disease, respiratory crisis, impotence, jaundice, narcolepsy,
frostbite, cramps, and soul-crushing guilt. It's true! You will get rid of those perils by altering their "nicotine delivery
system," and all that ex-smokers will be left with is the ignominy of getting fat and the quandary of not knowing where to
put their chewed gum.