#630 Junk Food

A long time a go, I’m pretty sure it was the eighties, they came out with chocolate-covered granola bars.
Granola bars were the australopithicus of today’s energy bars—primitive, but loaded with the supposedly healthy ingredients necessary to set us firmly on the road to walking upright.
They were supposed to be the alternative to candy bars. Even then, America was obsessing about junk food and still managing to find ways to get ever more obese.
I remember looking at the two healthy alternatives to Coke and candy bars and thinking, wow, Snapple and granola bars; this has got to be good for us all. Then I remember looking more closely and determining that Snapple, by using the simple expedient of labeling a bottle as two servings instead of one, masked the fact that it contained more sugar per ounce than Pepsi, 7up, or Coke.
And that the short story about the granola bars was they had just as much fat and, yes, sugar as did Snickers, Milky Way and the ever favorite O’Henry. I ranted in my stand-up comedy routine that a granola bar might as well be labeled Snickers.
Two steps forward, two steps back.
Snapple evolved into energy drinks and granola bars evolved into energy bars. Partly because it takes a lot of energy to move around all the extra bulk they’ve added to our collective cultural frame in the last 20 years.
And partly because “energy” is the new buzz-word.
Surprise; caffeine and sugar give you energy.
So when I heard an ad on the radio about the new Snickers “energy” bar I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was really just a matter of changing the packaging. And where you find it. Because the ad told us to look for it in the “energy bar aisle.”
We have arrived friend. Our supermarkets now devote a whole aisle designation to the energy bar category. And energy drinks as well.
But regardless of what they say, energy drinks are pretty much just un-carbonated pop or super-caffeinated pop. They ain’t healthy to gulp down.
That’s just a gulp fiction.
America, ya gotta love it