GRAIN, GRAIN GO AWAY
come back again another
craze.
Once again, with respect and apologies to Bill
Maher...
NEW RULE: This Whole Grain madness must stop immediately.
Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture federal dietary guidelines -- you know, the ones so essential and immutable that they change every year -- recommended that Americans increase our consumption of whole grains, lest we all contract cancer or heart disease or scurvy or rabies or some other ailment hurried along by the conspicuous consumption of processed grains, which were suddenly declared to be but one small step above the likes of saturated fats and cyanide. The recommendation sounded a clarion call for a nation still staggering around its grocery stores wondering where all the Atkins products have gone. Low-carb was out, whole grain was in, and food producers who'd rebranded before were only to eager to rebrand again.
And that would have been fine, if they'd just left well enough alone. If they'd merely churned out a few new product variations, slapped a couple of DO NOT FEAR; CONTAINS WHOLE GRAIN! labels on their packages, and woken up the slumbering marketing department. Two years ago, when everyone was making low-carb everything, we happy few who craved high carbs and resisted the urge to chase lemming-like after a diet fad we knew wouldn't last anyway could still buy our old, regular, great-tasting food; even at the height of its media-driven frenzy, the low-carb craze was never an all-or-nothing proposition. But this whole Whole Grain imbroglio, which will last about as long as the Atkins craze -- which is to say, about as long as it takes for some new diet or some new fad some new set of USDA guidelines to grab a few headlines -- has gone much, much deeper. And become much more distasteful.
Sure, some companies are sticking to the fair and sensible either-or model: you can get regular or whole grain Chips Ahoy! (the whole grain ones look like oatmeal raisin cookies and taste like the box the oatmeal raisin cookies came in) and Fig Newtons and Wheat Thins. You can get regular or whole grain versions of rice and linguini and pizza dough (which is virtually indistinguishable from the carton itself). But some companies and some products aren't giving you the choice; they're shoving the whole grain insanity right down your gagging, unwilling throat.
It's one thing for General Mills to go whole grain with Cheerios; when you're eating a bowl of heart-healthy oats, the difference is virtually indistinguishable. The same is true for Wheaties and Total and all the rest of their hysterically labeled -- 9 out of 10 Americans Aren't Getting Enough Whole Grain! Aim for at least 3 Servings of Whole Grain Each Day! If You Don't Eat Our Cereal You Will Die! (okay, I made up that last one, but the first two are real, curious capitalization and all) -- cereals. But Nabisco has fundamentally, regrettably altered both the taste and the texture of their Honey Maid Graham Crackers; they're smaller and drier and blander than before, so coarse and mottled that I wondered if I'd bought a box of doggie treats by mistake. And don't even get me started on the irreparable damage the demented people at Post have inflicted upon their once-proud Alpha Bits cereal; submerged in milk, they feel like papier mache paste, and they look and taste like someone chopped up a couple of toilet paper tubes and dropped them into your cereal bowl.
The boxes of these bastardized products inevitably proclaim some treacly nonsense like Now With the Goodness of Whole Grain! and Low in Sugar and a Good Source of Fiber! After eating these new and improved products -- and so longing for their old, inferior versions -- I have my own suggestion for the slogan on the box: Now More Likely to Make You Shit! And to Taste Like it Too!
NEW RULE: This Whole Grain madness must stop immediately.
Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture federal dietary guidelines -- you know, the ones so essential and immutable that they change every year -- recommended that Americans increase our consumption of whole grains, lest we all contract cancer or heart disease or scurvy or rabies or some other ailment hurried along by the conspicuous consumption of processed grains, which were suddenly declared to be but one small step above the likes of saturated fats and cyanide. The recommendation sounded a clarion call for a nation still staggering around its grocery stores wondering where all the Atkins products have gone. Low-carb was out, whole grain was in, and food producers who'd rebranded before were only to eager to rebrand again.
And that would have been fine, if they'd just left well enough alone. If they'd merely churned out a few new product variations, slapped a couple of DO NOT FEAR; CONTAINS WHOLE GRAIN! labels on their packages, and woken up the slumbering marketing department. Two years ago, when everyone was making low-carb everything, we happy few who craved high carbs and resisted the urge to chase lemming-like after a diet fad we knew wouldn't last anyway could still buy our old, regular, great-tasting food; even at the height of its media-driven frenzy, the low-carb craze was never an all-or-nothing proposition. But this whole Whole Grain imbroglio, which will last about as long as the Atkins craze -- which is to say, about as long as it takes for some new diet or some new fad some new set of USDA guidelines to grab a few headlines -- has gone much, much deeper. And become much more distasteful.
Sure, some companies are sticking to the fair and sensible either-or model: you can get regular or whole grain Chips Ahoy! (the whole grain ones look like oatmeal raisin cookies and taste like the box the oatmeal raisin cookies came in) and Fig Newtons and Wheat Thins. You can get regular or whole grain versions of rice and linguini and pizza dough (which is virtually indistinguishable from the carton itself). But some companies and some products aren't giving you the choice; they're shoving the whole grain insanity right down your gagging, unwilling throat.
It's one thing for General Mills to go whole grain with Cheerios; when you're eating a bowl of heart-healthy oats, the difference is virtually indistinguishable. The same is true for Wheaties and Total and all the rest of their hysterically labeled -- 9 out of 10 Americans Aren't Getting Enough Whole Grain! Aim for at least 3 Servings of Whole Grain Each Day! If You Don't Eat Our Cereal You Will Die! (okay, I made up that last one, but the first two are real, curious capitalization and all) -- cereals. But Nabisco has fundamentally, regrettably altered both the taste and the texture of their Honey Maid Graham Crackers; they're smaller and drier and blander than before, so coarse and mottled that I wondered if I'd bought a box of doggie treats by mistake. And don't even get me started on the irreparable damage the demented people at Post have inflicted upon their once-proud Alpha Bits cereal; submerged in milk, they feel like papier mache paste, and they look and taste like someone chopped up a couple of toilet paper tubes and dropped them into your cereal bowl.
The boxes of these bastardized products inevitably proclaim some treacly nonsense like Now With the Goodness of Whole Grain! and Low in Sugar and a Good Source of Fiber! After eating these new and improved products -- and so longing for their old, inferior versions -- I have my own suggestion for the slogan on the box: Now More Likely to Make You Shit! And to Taste Like it Too!
Posted: Sat - March 4, 2006 at 08:16 PM
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Published On: Nov 30, 2007 03:57 PM
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Published On: Nov 30, 2007 03:57 PM