Thursday, August 21, 2008

Snacks on a Plane


While waiting for our connection at Starbucks in the Houston airport, I eavesdropped on a man who had a handlebar mustache and a baggage handler's uniform stretched over his gut. 

"I heard if Continental took two peanuts out of every bag it'd save 'em $200,000," he announced to a table of men in fluorescent orange vests. 

Dude. I'm so sure. 

What I do know is that those little bags of honey roasted peanuts have corn in them! Yep, I checked the ingredient list and found maltodextrin, the weird sci-fi binding starch made with the Midwest's finest. 

The trouble is I'm finally getting around to reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I just finished the section where Pollan talks about how everyone in the United States is basically a big fat glob of high fructose corn syrup-covered corn balls. 

Now, I see corn everywhere. 

A woman next to me was having a McDonald's breakfast. I marveled at the corn! Corn-fed pork in strips of bacon, pancakes made with corn and drenched in corn syrup. I could go on about how this is bad for our bodies, the environment, the farmers, the economy, the animals etc., but you should really just read Pollan's version if you haven't already. 

Welcome back to America...Care for some corn?

McDonald's quality statement: 


Listening to: Hurricane by Mindy Smith b/c riding through clouds sometimes calls for melancholy songs.

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