Here’s another trend in food marketing that I’d like to make you aware of. I call it, “pretending to be food.” In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan, says that the things we often find in the grocery store are not, strictly speaking, “food.” They’re what he calls “food-like substances.” The trend I’m noticing is for highly-processed food-products to tout their food origins, thereby slathering themselves with the veneer of wholesome healthfulness that they have, in most cases, totally abdicated by the afore-mentioned processing.

What’s inside this Frito Lay bag? Potatoes?!

Well, no, it’s potato chips. But look, they’re basically just sliced right off of the spud! Where’s the picture of the boiling vat of soybean oil in which the potato slices are fried? Don’t be silly. I know why it’s not on the cover.

How about this Kix box? Why, it’s like they grew Kix puffs right there on an ear. In case you weren’t sure what you were looking at, they remind you that it’s “made with all natural corn”. Thanks. As opposed to that synthetic corn all the other cereals use? (Deathwater!) I fucking hate the “made with” cop-out. Here’s how it works. A shitty, processed food puts in a tiny amount of some “good” ingredient and then splashes “made with X” all over its packaging. Look up there at the top of the box. See that “made with whole grain”? How much whole grain do you think they use? Well, I don’t know. It could be a lot, or it could be hardly any.

So, look, I’m kind of a curmudgeon, because isn’t it nice that they’re including whole grains, and of all the cereals to pick on nutritionally, Kix is actually pretty low on the list. But my point is that Kix is about as far from an ear of corn as you can get while still being corn. Actually, that honor probably goes to plastic, which just goes to show you how hollow the phrase, “Made With All-Natural Corn” really can be in our techno-utopia.

Here, we have M&M’s imitating cocoa beans. No particularly biting commentary, just another example.

Look, you want to eat M&M’s, Kix, or potato chips, you don’t need to justify yourself to me. I keep a refrigerator drawer stocked with chocolate and enjoy it regularly. But don’t let the advertisers and the marketers fool you into kidding yourself that what you’re eating is some fresh-off-the-vine taste of nature. Kix is highly processed food. If that’s what you want to eat, go ahead. If you want to eat wholesome produce fresh-off-the-vine, that’s fine too, and you can find example after example of what THAT looks like elsewhere on this blog.

Edit: Added more pictures found after the fact.

Here are some caramel popcorn treats that are shaped like ears of corn. This one is a little on the edge, because popped corn is actually not too far away from Real Food, but I bet you that when you consider the HFCS and other ingredients that have gone into making this candy, any lingering resemblance to actual corn is long gone.