#343 Krusty Krumb

When I was talking about Propel Vitamin Water and its saturation into the soft drink market, I had to think—this whole vitamin thing is an American obsession too. And it’s funny how a drink that has vitamins added, but is still essentially sugar water, made the leap from soft drink to energy drink to vitamin sports supplement. So what you mean is, if I just call sugar water a sports supplement it is a sports supplement? It’s like when Wonder bread first came out. Wonder bread was one of the first products to take the best of the snake oil pitches of the previous century and wrap them in warm, fuzzy, mom-and-apple-pie malarkey. Wonder Bread, with its white wrapper and festive colorful balloons, was every kid’s dream bread. Made from finely milled flour with just a touch extra sugar added to bring that delicate sweetness that could turn an ordinary peanut butter and jelly sandwich into dessert. Woe to the poor child who carted a generic supermarket bakery bread sandwich to the lunchroom. Ugly and misshapen, such bread slices were like trolls compared to the pristine and glorious uniformity and whiteness of Wonder Bread, the princess of all breads. And lest mothers be suspicious Wonder Bread added vitamins. So just because it looked like a fluffy piece of bubble-headed non-nutritious nothing, why heck no, Mrs. Cleaver, this bread has added vitamins and helps build bodies in 12 ways. Judging by the waistlines of Americans today, one of those ways was obesity. “That kid’s growing like a weed on that Wonder Bread, June.” “Actually, Ward, I think he’s growing like a potato.” And adding vitamins to white bread is like teaching a debutante to talk dirty. It misses the point. Twinkies and Wonder Bread occupy one side of the American food chain and that’s okay. Put them under the category of indulgence and get on with it. The same for soft drinks. There is a lot of controversy about whether added vitamins do anything anyhow. For years, we’ve been told to eat fruits and vegetables. It’s pretty simple. We’re omnivores, we need to omni-eat. Yet we still want to have all desserts and add in those pesky little vitamins and minerals in something other than broccoli form. The funny thing is, like Wonder Bread, we often process the real vitamins out first. Whole wheat or multigrain bread has a lot of vitamins. And bumps and scars and chunky bits that make you think you got crunchy instead of smooth peanut butter. I look at it this way. Wonder Bread is to whole grain bread what baloney is to a slice of roast beef. Wonder and baloney each have shelf live of a millennium. And enough chemicals to manufacture a biological weapon. How can a vitamin possibly survive in that environment? Give me a slab of beef and a hunk of whole grain bread any day. Because life is lumpy, chunky and more often than not, a little bit crusty. Like me.
America, ya gotta love it.