When Heinz introduced green ketchup, I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Then along came blue and purple ketchup, and my upper lip curled in a defiant sneer. Now, with pink, orange and (God help us!) teal entering the food chain, I'm finding it hard not to lose my lunch.
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| | | Kristy Graver is a writer living in Oakland (kristy@sillygoosesaloon.com). | |
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Unfortunately, the rainbow doesn't end at cosmetically enhanced condiments. These days, walking through any grocery store aisle is like having a bad '80s flashback (complete with Debbie Gibson Muzak blaring overhead). Everything -- from cereal to pastries to good ol' macaroni & cheese -- has adopted a new, obnoxiously neon hue. It's enough to make you scratch your head and wonder who the hell put Punky Brewster in charge of the Food and Drug Administration.
Ore-Ida, a division of Heinz, became a pioneer in this Technicolor snack conspiracy when it unleashed "Funky Fries." What makes them so funky? Aside from their unorthodox shapes and nearly luminescent colors, these greasy, deep-fried nuggets of artery-clogging goodness are flavored with cinnamon, sugar and chocolate. Ore-Ida ad wizards came up with "Funky Fries" after surveying ravenous tots from around the country on what kind of mutant-fry-concoction they'd like to see on the dinner table. Predictably, the kids responded with hundreds of zany food group orgies. And the marketers, even more predictably, delivered the goods, designing a sugar-packed product for "kids with a sweet tooth" (as if there's any other kind).
It's a relief to see that Froot Loop Fries have, so for, been rejected. But I shudder to think what other nausea-inducing flavors almost made it into the grocer's freezer. Peanut butter & jelly? Paste? Mud?
At what point, precisely, did children attain this awesome stranglehold on American consumerism?
It's only a matter of time before food companies begin targeting other nutritionally defective demographics and create specifically engineered junk-food products to appease their chemically imbalanced appetites. Pot smoker? Well here you go, Cheech, have some POTato Munchies! Pregnant? Eat for two with these delicious chocolate-covered Pickle Poppers! In a fraternity? Why not serve some beer-flavored Suds N' Spuds at your next kegger? They're a whopping 9 percent alcohol by volume!
Supporters of the snacks say that the festive colors and easy squeeze bottles allow their children to express themselves creatively during mealtime. They can paint masterpieces on their morning toast with fluorescent butter . . . marvel at the way their cereal sparkles with "pixie dust" . . . go schizo when their lime-green Kool-Aid powder mysteriously turns blue in water and -- surprise! -- tastes like cherry. I'm all for encouraging creativity, but I'm sure there came a time when even Picasso's mother told him to quit playing with his food and just eat it.
All these dyed side dishes can't be healthy for kids. Have we learned nothing from the red M&M epidemic of the mid-1980s? Marketers need to realize that if they keep dishing out heaping portions of sugar-enriched products, these poor kids won't have any sweet teeth left. (New product idea for Ore-Ida: "Funky Puree.")
I'm fearful that if this colorful trend continues, kids will wake up on Easter morning to baskets filled not with milk-chocolate bunnies or standardized yellow Peeps, but with big, honking bottles of hot-pink mayonnaise and individually wrapped slices of turquoise cheese.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I hear that age-old parental mantra, "Eat your vegetables, they're good for you!" morph into "Eat your vegetables -- they're blue."
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