After eating a decently satisfying lunch of a mixed salad and half of a vegetarian sandwich, my guilty pleasure got the best of me. Again. After scanning the shelves of the 2 Convenient (the convenience store in my dorm room), I discovered an invaluable niche of the freezer section. The Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen Dazs corner. And to my delight, on the bottom shelf lay a variety of mini Ben & Jerry’s containers, packaged into single-serving portions. How convenient, I thought to myself. I picked up a mini "Cherry Garcia" and scanned the package, just to notice that a mini spoon was included under the lid. This just keeps getting more and more amazing by the second. Or at least that’s what an ice-cream-lover like me would think. Ben & Jerry’s has conveniently come up with a method to get customers to spend $2 on a bite-sized 3.6 fluid ounces amount of ice cream. I myself was willing to pay the price just because it looked so cute and delicious. A common thought process, I would assume. This is the perfect solution for someone who is afraid of buying the entire pint in worry that there is then the very likely possibility that they will consume its entirety. This was also one of my justifications for opting with the mini version, even though it was obviously much more expensive to buy the ice cream in such a small quantity.
It was the perfect amount of cherry-chocolaty goodness to finish my noon-time meal. That is, until I read the ingredients list on the back of the package: cream, water, liquid sugar...corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, coconut oil, cocoa, natural flavor, caramel and red cabbage juice extract, concentrated lemon juice, guar gum, carrageenan, and soya lecithin. Yummmmy. So after a healthy salad, this is what I had chosen to put into my body, red cabbage juice and corn syrup? Not to mention all of the stabilizers and natural flavorings (which is probably mostly corn as well). And according to Berkeley biologist Todd Dawson, "when you look at the isotope ratios...we North Americans look like corn chips with legs" (Pollan 23).
But at the same time, it was quite an easy sweet to consume. I didn’t have to get a bowl or a spoon or measure out my own portions. I didn’t have to bake my own cookies or churn my own ice cream. It was all right there and ready for me, all for only $2 of my $350 per month meal plan. Pretty convenient, huh?
Convenient food is a relatively new creation. Before the world wars of the early 20th century, there was not much in the way of frozen or processed foods. “The main marketing plank of the twentieth-century marriage between the production of food and the consumption of food-related images was ‘convenience,’ a hugely flexible term which could not merely be applied to foods, but to all goods and services supposed to ‘make life easier’” as described by Roger Haden’s Taste in an Age of Convenience.
Has this shift from basic foods to convenient foods made an impact on our lifestyles? I’d sure say so. Just look at our grocery and convenient stores. Pretty much everything in the middle sections are processed, canned, mass-produced, or frozen. “Chemical additives simulate the qualities of tastes, textures, and other gustatory sensations, as the experience of tasting an actual food, of thinking about that food and of the way it tastes, becomes an impossibility” (Haden 349). You walk down the street and see people snacking on a bag of Doritos, taking a bite out of a Snicker’s bar, or gulping down a Gatorade.
And that is the main point and reason for success. Not only is this sort of “junk food” convenient to the consumer, but it tastes good as well. After sampling instant ramen noodles and Diet Coke in class yesterday, as much as I wish I did not like it, the ramen noodles were pretty tasty. A little on the salty side, but just the same, for a dollar it was not bad. Which is exactly where the appeal for fast food comes from. It makes the most economic sense, as you can buy more food at McDonald’s with $5 than you could at a Farmer’s Market. But at what cost? What about personal health and environmental sustainability? The sad part is that many people cannot afford to consider these factors, or do not realize that they come into play. That is the sad part. So how do we make healthier, environmentally-friendly food cost less and be more available to the general public? I wish there was an easy answer...
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