Stop Before You Reach For That Donut!
Who is more complex, a human or a donut? Surprise!
By James Terminiello
Last week, in a fit of dietary heresy, I dropped in at a local convenience store and purchased a single Boston crème donut. Yes, I know in some quarters this act alone is punishable by being ostracized forever from all contact with civilized society. But, for the moment, let’s call it a commando raid where I risked my digestive tract and chances for greater longevity to see just how the “others” live.
I’m here to tell you it was a daring, courageous, and informative behind the lines action. As I sat at the steering wheel of my car and savored the fiendish confection’s multitude of soft, yielding, dark chocolatey, sweet, creamy, and doughy charms. (I pause now to wrestle with an addict’s remorse) I glanced at the packaging which had adhered to my horn.
There, in microscopic lettering cunningly designed to be ignored, was the encyclopedic catalogue of the 66 (yes 66, I counted them!) ingredients that made up this fluffy quintessence of fast food.
I was boggled. Never in the field of baking has so much been compacted into something so small to produce a sensory cloud of, in effect, nutritional anti-matter.
There were the usual suspects: Benzoic Acid, Beta Carotene, Soy Lecithin, and enough preservatives to preserve other preservatives and the kin folk well into the next century.
Snuggled among the 66 were some real head scratchers. Tartaric Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides sounds like the descendants of the Mongol hordes that pillaged their way through Medieval Russia. Then there is FD&C Yellow #6. Do we really need three different Yellow #6s? Such luxury! I’m sorry but Glucono Delta-Lactone has the ring of a high-caliber button man engaged to off selected members of the Five Families.
There are the standard warnings that peanuts and tree nuts were lurking about in the same zip code during the making (spawning?) of this deadly donut. And if we were not already neck deep into the whirlingly bizarre world of 21st century food technology, we are also informed that the little critter contains bioengineered food ingredients. We’re dancing on the very tip of the cutting edge.
But, now it’s time to really get scared!
About 99% of our bodies are made up of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus. Pretty boring stuff. No mighty Tartars lopping off heads here. Then there are minor bits of sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. Roughly 11 elements are essential to make one of us. Perhaps a Kim Kardashian has traces of gold and platinum swirled into the mix but, for the most part, there are 11 ingredients to net you a standard-issue human being … and 66 to conjure up that Boston crème donut!
In one sense, I’m honored. If I were to individually purchase each of the 66 ingredients that make up Donutus Erectus (It kind of deserves an honorific Latin name, don’t you think?) it would cost way more than the roughly three bucks I shelled out.
On the other sticky, chocolate-coated hand, I wonder where we are going. Does it really require such a symphony of disparate and ultra-sciency ingredients to reach Boston crème donut critical mass? Have we already crossed a confectionary event horizon into a donut realm of our own making but, perhaps, not of our own control? Just what or who have we created here?
I may be hyperventilating a bit but, then again, I’m the one who ate the thing and I’m the one stuck with visions of actor John Hurt in the movie Alien!
James Terminiello, author of the sci-fi satire Junkyard, writes from Mount Laurel, NJ.
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