That's what it says on the back of this box of angel food cake mix from Betty Crocker.
Everyone knows who Betty Crocker is, and yes she is too a real person, not just some made up fake artwork by an ad agency. It bugs me when people say that.
When I read the part that said their cake mix was just like our Grandmas used to make it made me start thinking about that. Oh the memories.
What kind of grandmother did you have? Who's grandma had a scientific laboratory in her kitchen which she utilized every time she prepared a meal? Did your
grandmother have test tubes filled with home made chemicals that she whipped up to make things taste like something they weren't? Did she use test tube ingredients to give food color that it didn't have? Or to give it smell that it didn't have? You know, did she chemically create food scented perfume, so that her food would smell like something it wasn't made out of? It was so, so good back then.
Did your Grandma have a big mechanical contraption where she would pour in those cheap oils that weren't really for eating, and then blast them with hydrogen? Did she ever mention why she wouldn't just use food quality oils with health giving properties instead of ones you shouldn't eat that have been poisoned with hydrogen and which cause heart disease? Did your Grandmother do that and then feed it to you and say, "This is much healthier than eating natural oil, honest, trust me."? So did mine! What a coincidence!
Was yours one of those Grandmothers that understood the benefits of adding chemicals to all your food? Because just maybe she knew that just because something isn't food doesn't mean you can't eat it. And if you can eat it, that must make it edible! It was so cute when she said that, she'd wag her finger at me whenever she said it.
She loved to make and add all sorts of artificial things to my food. Like her own favorite kitchen chemicals that made foam, or stopped caking whatever that means, or chemicals that retarded decomposition, so the foods we ate could be really really old and we'd never know it. How cool. She'd call it extending freshness. Grandmas did those things because they loved you and they wanted you to be healthy and strong. And nobody's Grandmother would ever lie to them or purposely feed their grandchildren toxic chemicals to save herself a few dollars at meal times and get rich. How ridiculous.
Did your Grandmother strip all the nutrients from all of her fresh ingredients before using them in her cooking like mine did? If so, when you asked her "Why do you strip out the nutrients grandma?", did she say, "To enrich it dear". And then did you say, "But grandma if you take out the nutrients, isn't that depleting the food value, not improving it?" Did she say, "It's not really depleted dear, Grandma sprinkles chemical vitamins she made in her laboratory on your food. It replaces some of what Grandma took out." It's funny how they were all like that. It's such a small world.
Did you ever ask, "The chemical vitamins you sprinkle in after depleting the nutritional value, are they anywhere as good as the ones that were in the food in the first place Grandma?" Did your grandma say to you and your Grandpa and your Mom and Dad and siblings, "It's absolutely just as good, even better."? Well of course she did, that's what all Grandmothers said. I knew that.
Did you ever ask her why she would do all of that stuff anyway? What did she say? I always wondered if it wouldn't have been so much easier on her to just use food the way it came out of the ground, all fresh and everything, and just cook it. She had so much other work to do you know, cooking and cleaning and laundry. It would have been so much faster for her, and already healthy and save worries about the critical loss of simple things like enzymes that you need to digest the food after eating it. I never got a chance to ask her about it though.
Grandmas knew so much about everything. Science, lab work, how much plastic it's safe to eat per meal. I imagine mine in her kitchen laboratory, with her little apron on, and her knee-highs drooping around her sensible shoes, with calipers and a gas mask, boiling little canisters and tweaking knobs during her high heat processing, brings back memories doesn't it?
Wasn't it always something to look forward to when she was making cookies and she'd come out with the bowl of dough and say, "Here darling, taste this for Grandma and tell her if it tastes kind of like chocolate chip cookie dough". Yummy. It was amazing how she could almost make lab goo and chemicals seem so, well, food like. She was quite a gal. She could outsmart nature because she knew more than it did about what your body needs. She could outsmart you too because you ate at her house all the time and you never knew that nothing you ate could be considered food in the most basic, simple description of the word. How cool is that?
Wasn't it creepy when you first realized that Grandma was going way over-board with all this tinkering? I remember when that happened to me. I had asked her, "Grandma, could I get your recipe for Scalloped Potatoes?" or was it Macaroni and Cheese? Well you know, it was one of those that all Grandma's used to make with a packet of powdered chemicals, you know, that she'd so painstakingly added bright pretty artificial colors to, you know, like that cheese-ish powder, it was so pretty in that real bright yellowy-orange? It was one of those ones that Grandma's are so incredibly good at.
That was home cooking wasn't it? Boy was it good. Anyway, she handed me the recipe and I looked and there were all these goofy weird laboratory chemicals on it, and I said, "Woah Grandma! Where in the heck am I supposed to get all this kind of stuff? They don't sell this at the grocery stores!" So she gave me a list of chemical companies and their phone numbers. I told her right then and there that I thought she'd gone a little over board. Just one number would have been plenty. What, did she think I wanted to be on the phone all day?
Did your Grandmother spend thousands of hours in her home kitchen laboratory working with petroleum by-products and insects and rats? Did she inject little animals like mine did, or perhaps you, with thousands of chemical potions she invented just to see what would happen? Did she give you shots of delicious pesticides, tasty fungicides, & haute couture insecticides, all mixed together with her other wholesome non food ingredients? Did you get as sick as the rats did? So did I! That was so funny wasn't it? She used to run out of rats all the time from them keeling over for no reason. She said she thought the cages were getting a draft. I'd never have known how dangerous it is to get a chill if she hadn't been there to tell me how dangerous it could be. I don't forget my sweater anymore, that I can tell you for sure.
Did your Grandmother ever make your whole family eat something she invented that was sweet like sugar and didn't have any food value but it was carcinogenic, to see if any of you got cancer? Wasn't that funny? And when your Mom did get cancer and died, wasn't that hilarious? Especially since Grandma never told any of you that she was doing that! What a hoot.
A couple of times I even remember my Mom saying to my Grandma, "Mom, are you sure all these chemicals and pesticides and artificial sweeteners are safe? Can I see your lab notes on these for myself?" And Grandma looked her right in the eye with a perfectly straight face and she said, "Honey for Pete's sake, there is no evidence that any of those things could so much as harm a baby bunny! Don't be silly. And no you can't see my lab notes sweetie, you know Grandma considers those to be her own little secret. Don't you trust your own Mother? Maybe you need to get some rest dear, you look a little tired to me." Then Grandma would look at the rest of the family and say, "Usually when she gets like this it's because she's near her period!" Oh how everyone laughed. Those were the days.
Our Grandmas loved all of us so much, all they wanted to do was make us happy, because we all meant the world to them. So you knew for a fact that when she told you again and again that it was all perfectly safe, even if it wasn't food at all, that you didn't have to give it another thought because it WAS safe. For true and for sure. Except for your Mom's cancer of course, and your Dad's heart disease, which your brother also got, but it didn't have anything to do with Grandma's chemicals because she would have said something if she had any idea they were actually, say, really deadly over time.
So, that's why I love big food companies like Betty Crocker and Kraft so much.
Because every time I eat food from them, I can taste how much it's just exactly like how my grandmother used to cook back in the old fashioned days. Those big companies all use the same exact chemicals and toxic ingredients our Grandmas did, and mmm-mmm it sure does taste almost like food.
Plus they can do even more delicious things now like using big old microscopes and stuff to genetically mess with the DNA of foods like corn and soybeans and canola and they can tweak it to make it grow big batches of it's very own insecticide, all by itself. Any bug that eats that corn is D-E-A-D. Yet it's perfectly safe for humans to eat! Is that cool or what? Imagine, eating corn on the cob that is brimming with natural pesticide deliciousness that the corn itself grew from it's own manipulated DNA. YUMMY that sounds good! Gimme an ear right now and pass the butter!
You don't care about eating genetically manipulated foods do you? Of course not, who could have a problem with that? So who cares that they don't tell you when they put it in almost every single thing you eat? I wish they'd hurry up and genetically modify ALL of our foods. So far it's just all the corn and corn products, the corn oils, corn starch, corn meal, corn chips, and even corn syrups which thankfully are in almost everything at the supermarket. Heck you couldn't get away from it if you wanted to! But who'd want to? It's great! Oh wait, all the soy and soy products, and all the Canola and canola products are genetically modified too, so that's a start. Don't worry, you're eating all kinds of frankenated DNA foods now and have been for a long time. You aren't missing out on a bit of all this exciting food improving technology. And guess what! Right now they're actually growing RICE that has it's DNA spliced with HUMAN DNA. Is that beyond cool or what? That's going to be some good rice don't you think?
You know what else we'll be surprised with? All the weird spontaneous goofy fruits and vegetables that happen by accident with that pesky uncontrollable cross-pollinating process! There's no way to control modified DNA crops and keep them away from those cute little birds and bees! We could have all kinds of laughs when entire fields of crops miles away suddenly adapt the gene that self terminates the whole thing! And all of the trees too! That is too funny to sit still for. Imagine getting up one day and hearing on the news that there is no more food because the self-terminator gene went hog wild and spread everywhere. There's lots more nutty experiments that are just as interesting in the works right now. It makes you feel so modern doesn't it? And happy inside too.
But be patient, it IS all happening right now. They just don't want anyone to get too excited so they keep it pretty low key, you know, 'need to know basis'. It's the right way to handle things. Besides, it's the kind of thing that could affect the whole darn world so who's better qualified to make decisions about all this stuff anyway? Bingo, the very companies who want only the best for us and don't care a lick about obscene profits like other big companies do. And Governments, pish, what do they know about crops? No, it's better to keep it on the hush and let the experts keep experimenting to see what happens when they fiddle with this and that, and then grow it and feed it to us. It's serious business. Oh don't worry, the FDA is involved! Everything is fine.
Hot buttered genetically modified corn on the cob, and who knows how old it is, or where the heck it was grown? Who cares? I really do want some right now, I just need a pat of dairy butter. But wait, isn't that natural butter stuff just hideous and awful and dangerous? It can kill you! Better make it margarine then! With extra hydrogenated oils please! Yum!Yum!
It's a darn good thing the nice food company people, who know all about this stuff, specifically told everyone and all the doctors and health places and newspapers and magazines about how natural butter and natural fats are SO bad for you!! I mean those natural fats have all kinds of creepy natural components that seem to be good for you, and besides, if you ate those natural fats they'd make you feel full and satisfied.
And who wants that? You'd probably end up eating less and lose weight or something, and you know you shouldn't ever try to lose weight with natural food. That's just crazy. You need to have Slim Fast and diet bars and diet stuff made especially for losing weight while trying hard to lose it, because they have lots of sugar and they still don't taste very good. That means it's a serious method of weight loss that anyone can trust, even pregnant moms. Those products are made with plenty of chemicals and artificial additives that you'd never notice aren't really food at all! That's just how great they really are. Even Grandma knew that it didn't have to actually be food to feed it to the ones you love.
It's a VERY lucky thing for all of us that they could invent totally fake engineered fats to sell us instead of butter and food quality oils, huh? Because everyone knows that artificial fats and chemicals are WAY MORE HEALTHY than any pewie natural fats!
Only a total goober would think that just because they can't prove it is safe is a reason to worry. Besides, it would take a really long time to test all this stuff to make absolutely certain that say in 20 years of eating it regularly that no one would be all disease ridden or other gross stuff like that. Like so many Americans are today at epidemic levels. And by the way, just because MSG is the LONG TIME number one choice of kitchen laboratory scientists all over the world to induce guaranteed obesity in baby rats is NO REASON to jump to silly conclusions like it would make humans fat too. Come on now stay here in the land of reality already okay?
Besides, they put that great MSG into everything now under 50 different names like autolyzed yeast proteins and stuff, so many different names even the great food companies will tell you there's no possible way you'll be able to recognize it. You're getting plenty of MSG even when it's not listed in the ingredients. These days they have to put it in everything, because it's addictive! It makes you want to eat too much, so you have to run right back to the store and buy lots more food. So don't panic, it's in everything. The important thing is, that these wonderful, generous, kind caring big Agricultural Companies that process all of our daily foods shouldn't have to make us wait before benefiting EVERYONE with all of these great additives and fungus killing agents and stuff that can make an apple look edible for 15 weeks! I wouldn't want to have to wait, would you?
I guess that's why I get so silly and sentimental when I pick up a box of Betty Crocker Angel Food Cake Mix and read on the back where it says, "Just like Grandma used to make." It makes me feel so safe and loved, it's almost like being little again, with my Grandma serving me fresh hot cookie-like things oozing with toxic goo. More please!
08-06-05
