This is the sixth installment in a series of short essays inspired by the 22 Trump cards, featuring original artwork by Greg Erskine (Click and scroll down for large version).
I’m not really into favorites. I don’t have a favorite color, or a favorite book, or a favorite flavor of ice cream. Not only does it make me hard to shop for, it makes filling out forms on social networking sites like Facebook really nerve-wracking. Would-be friends and lovers are impatiently waiting to judge me purely on what I write in the box -- but do I really prefer Björk’s “Medúlla” album to Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell”? Can I really say with authority that the The Elephant Man is a better movie than, say, Easter Parade? Perhaps the only solution is to enjoy them simultaneously:
Anyhow, I didn’t exactly recognize the special feeling creeping up on me this summer until it was actively rotting my teeth. I was waiting for a bus and had gotten about halfway through a bag of Haribo Fruit Salad, savoring tiny, sugar-encrusted bites of what I think is supposed to represent a wedge of grapefruit, when I caught myself thinking the actual words, My god, I am so gloriously happy right now. Silly, isn’t it, for a grown man to let a piece of candy toy with his emotions? But I had to face facts. This was no mere dalliance -- this was my third bag of Fruit Salad in as many days. I turned the bright yellow bag over in my hands, appraising it. It's a miracle of visual marketing -- the bag robustly and cheerfully provides in full everything that it promises. The gummi fruit pieces are every bit as fresh ‘n fruity n’ chewy as advertised. "Kids and Grown-ups Love It So,” the bag declares with modest pride, as if to say, "We don't think we're anything special -- but apparently the public has spoken." Of course, the slogan applies to the entire world of Haribo products, but I’m tempted to believe that Fruit Salad deserves a greater share of the credit than the Fizzy Cola bottles, or those insipid Build-a-Burgers. And to top it all off, the shit is fat free.
“My god,” I said, out loud so that all of my fellow commuters could bear witness, “This is my favorite candy. I have a favorite candy.”
Let me count the ways. Six fruits are represented, each a clear note that can be played independently or harmonized to form a spectral chorus. Cherry. Lemon. Orange. The glorious grapefruit. That whitish one which I think is meant to be a peach. And my favorite of all: the green thing. Is it meant to be lime? Sour apple? Unimportant. I try to eat them in a specific order every time, product quality-control permitting, beginning with my least favorite (cherry) and working toward a climax that finishes with the green thing. By the time the symphony ends, I’m no longer thinking rationally. I begin it all over again, intent on repeating the cycle until there’s nothing left in the bag but a quarter inch of loose sugar grains.
How did these Haribo geniuses do it? Whatever the “natural flavors” consist of, they’re more complex than your average penny-candy fruit wedges by several orders of magnitude. And Fruit Salad doubles as a unique mouthfeel experience -- each fruit is a different shape that tends to vary in density and chewiness, even within the same bag. Some pieces are as tender as your own tongue, the sugared rinds barely containing their melty contents. Other pieces seem to have toughened a bit on the vine, forcing your mouth to disrobe them in layers. I've always thought of myself as too much of a candy-lover to ever bed down with just one treat -- I want it all, from the deepest dark chocolate to the foamy orange Circus Peanuts. But the sheer variety that exists within a single bag of Fruit Salad hits enough receptors at once that I am tricked into complacency. It allowed me feel as if, at long last, I could experience commitment without compromise.
But as all flowers necessarily have their roots in the dark earth, each love affair contains its own built-in tragedy. Having become downright evangelical about the happy world of Haribo, sharing my Fruit Salad with pretty much anyone I talked to for more than five minutes, I decided it was time to partner up -- I would contact the company and see if they were interested in advertising on my website. (I recognize that Tarot is not a subject that necessarily lends itself to a promotional candy tie-in, but I figured a large Japanese company might be oblivious to those details. I was thinking with my tongue.)
So I trotted over to their happy online directory to see whom I should contact about writing “HARIBO” on my site in big chewy letters, and while searching for a contact form, I strolled into the FAQ to learn a little more about their diverse range of products -- valuable, I thought, on the off-chance that I wound up actually talking to a corporate representative. Most of the queries were rather whimsical, such as “Can I buy just one flavor of Haribo Gold-Bears?” (The answer: No. “We recommend finding some friends who like the other colors and trading with them!”) Then I spied this fairly innocuous question: “What type of gelatin does Haribo use?” I hesitated. I figured I probably oughtn't examine my favorite candy too closely. But since I am only human, I couldn't help plucking the gummi apple from the Tree of Knowledge. The answer: “Haribo products produced in Haribo's factory in Turkey are made with beef gelatin and are certified HALAL. All other items are made with pork gelatin.”
English is a funny language. Out of context, the word “gelatin” is sort of elegant, really. When you read it, you imagine blameless, pellucid cubes on a conveyor belt, blank slates quivering in anticipation as they wait to be imbued with magical, “natural” flavors. It looks so nondescript on a list: blah blah, Corn Syrup, Gelatin, Citric Acid, Fumaric Acid, blah blah. In the murderer’s row of common candy ingredients, the presence of gelatin is downright comforting.
“Pork gelatin”, unfortunately, is evocative in an entirely different way. It conjures aromatic images of skins and skeletons, scalding water and enzyme solvents. Cauldrons. Industrial fumes. Living flesh particles that have been mechanically and chemically broken down -- digested -- beyond recognition. “Gelatin” has a certain mystique, but "Pork Gelatin" hides nothing, it fails to transcend the sum of its eye-watering ingredients. In my case, anyhow, it was a grim reminder of the absolute nadir of the industrial food chain. On one end of the miles-long conveyer belt, a factory-farmed pig who has never known the essential pleasures of real dirt underfoot or sun on its skin, who was probably raised on a diet of meat-byproducts deemed unfit for even gelatin-production. On the other end, mouthwatering fruit shapes cascade into merry little bags. The deception is downright insidious.
As I sat there marinating in my distaste, I couldn’t resist being amused by another question on the page, about Haribo factory tours: “All 18 Haribo factories are located in Europe. Unfortunately they do not offer tours to the public.” Well, I thought, I should think not.
I’m not what you would call a vegetarian or an animal rights activist. I spent a lot of time on my grandparents' cattle ranch as a child, and I remember standing by and watching as calves became steers, their freshly harvested testicles deposited in the crusty coffee-can which had been nailed to a nearby fence-post for this very purpose. There were days when red-hot branding irons perfumed the fresh air with the essence of burning skin, but it somehow never kept me from enjoying my share of that night's beef stew.
However, my grandparents and their range-fed animals belong to another agricultural era, and now I'm very selective about which animal products I consume, and how they were produced. And so this revelation made me feel deeply conflicted. Additionally, I felt stupid for having been too blinded by my sugar-high to have put two and two together on my own. Given my upbringing, my denial was embarrassingly naive -- where on earth had I thought that the 7% of my daily protein-value per bag was coming from, anyway? The Yellow No. 5? My dairy- and nut-free favorite candy has a protein-value. How gross is that?
I was also disturbed by my own hypocrisy. As a consumer, shouldn't I be happy that these by-products weren't going to waste? If I'm to enjoy the occasional no-questions-asked hot pastrami sandwich, isn't it fitting to abase myself by occasionally dining on the sludge at the bottom of the barrel as well? Was I horrified by the ingredient and all it stood for, or was I horrified because I literally could not get enough of it? The idea of having gained and lost a favorite candy seemed more painful to me than never having had one at all. Had my access to that happy world of fresh ’n fruity ’n chewy pleasure been permanently barred? Would I settle for a Fruit Salad-free world -- or even worse, one of guilty, ironic indulgence?
The answer to that last question has turned out to be, predictably, both yes and no. After a week or so hiatus, during which I drowned my sorrows in Toblerone, I bought another bag of Fruit Salad. Its 26 grams of sugar per-serving (and 2 grams of protein) tasted just as good to me as ever. Better, even -- I’d missed each flavor like a friend. There is an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance to overcome in enjoying any heavily-processed food, but the miraculous transformation of hog-ankle stew into a sparkling, lip-smacking delicacy (named, in a master stroke of evil genius, after a much healthier snack) continues to short-circuit my brain. I don’t just eat the fruit slices -- I savor them. I take little bites to make them last longer, I cut them open with my teeth and turn them inside-out so that I can plunder their slick gummi insides. I want to come back to Earth and its harsh realities, its inferior candies. I want to think of the stench of the pit that wrought these gems, but their power over me is too strong. Am lost in the happy world of Haribo. Please send help.
No comments:
Post a Comment