Day 73, Blehch?

Can you guess what this is?:

-Dehydrated potatoes

-Modified food starch

-Sugar

-Corn oil

-Salt

-Soy lecithin

-Leavening (Monocalcium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate)

-Dextrose


Any ideas? Anybody?

Those, my dear friends, would be the entire ingredients list to Lay’s Original Naturally Baked Potato Crisps.



A couple of nights ago I was standing around in my kitchen later on into the night looking for something to do...well, to be honest, I was looking for a little bit of something to munch on because my stomach was growling pretty fiercely and I was worried that if I didn’t feed it something then it would begin to literally eat itself in a crazy, blind frenzy. I happened to look at the corner of the counter that usually is home to our various chip collection, a place that I haven’t much looked at in the past month and a half, and saw those babies. My interest was piqued and I tentatively took the bag out and unrolled it all the time looking over my shoulder in case someone should be watching my insidious indiscretion. The bag was nearly full and the chips inside looked out at me longingly. I slowly took out a chip, a pathetic, cracked little thing, and put it on my tongue. And then I bit down, and around and chewed and moved it around and swallowed.

It was immediately salty, almost unbearably so, and it shocked me. I had once eaten bowls full of these things? I had once thought that something like these were delicious and, because they were baked, not very bad for me at all? I had once looked forward to having these after a long week and would crash down on my couch and gladly inhale piece after piece?

Weird.

I had another one after that but that was all I could take. I gladly rolled the bag back up and stuffed the entire thing back into its corner, happy to be rid of the things. My mouth was in violent throes due to the saltiness. I might just as well have spooned salt into my mouth and gotten the very same effect, plus I wouldn’t have ingested all of those chemicals that keep those things alive and well and capable of living through a nuclear blast.

Cockroaches and potato chips--all that will be left in the fallout.

Let me have my dried fruits. Let me feast upon risotto and quinoa. Let me partake in fresh vegetables and all of the wild concoctions that can arise from having to eat those things. At least with all of those natural, tasty things I won’t be left with the ability to accurately describe what monocalcium phosphate tastes like. I have no need to be able to pick that stuff out of a lineup.