As a yes-and to my Brits-getting-fat-in-America diet, comes this fantastic video:
I didn’t make it through the whole thing (cue Sweet Brown meme).
But about halfway through, you start to get a really good idea of just what our food’s done to us. Koreans who’ve never had the pleasure of dining on the SAD (Standard American Diet) try some of our most iconic snackfoods – from pop tarts to Twizzlers to salt and vinegar chips.
What’s fascinating, though, isn’t just their rating.
It’s their physical responses to our most popular nom-able processed crap.
Said processed crap, as we established in a prior article, is packed full’a sugar and fat. Both, in moderation, are good alone. Both combined together and destined for your tummy are tantamount to vittle dope, because fat+sugar causes the same kinda dopamine release you get with a drug. The seasoning excites your tastebuds, lures you in, and before you know it, you’re an Oliver Twitch-ing junkie loitering in the snackfood aisle of your local Food Lion (“Please, suh. S’more s’mores. And chips. And cheetos. And…”). Congratulations! You’re officially an addict. You’ll never need to look far for another fix in this land – they’re happy to shower you with it everywhere you turn.
And none of that is more beautifully exemplified than it is in the above taste test.
(I do mean the video… although that saucy gif is pretty thorough, as well.)
Girls with sleek hair, beautiful skin, and barely any excess body fat (pretty much the antithesis of the typical American) – all who’ve never touched this stuff – are trying these “foods” we’ve pretty much grown up on for the first time in their lives. And, at first, they comment on how it looks “artificial”. Can’t argue with that, really. Or how the Pop Tart they tried (ya know, the thing that when combined with a 7-11 Slurpee, comprised your high school breakfast and sustained you through at least third period -er… second and a half?) tasted “kinda like a candle”. Yes. I was gonna say sugarcoated Ikea furniture, but, close enough. Then, one girl, trying the Salt ‘n Vinegar chips, said she felt like her “tongue is being punched”. And, really, who can argue with any of that? In fact, I dunno Korean, but I bet she actually said “punished” and the ‘terp just effed up the translation.
But, if you watch, as they sample more of it, you start noticing them saying things like “I dunno why I like it!”. Or – my favorite – the girl who gives the deplorable confection a deservedly low-star rating, right before a wave of self-awareness hits her like a tsunami: “…but look at me! I’m still eating it!” Yep. Welcome to the wonderful world of America’s most popular addiction, dollface: fat n’ sugar (Fugar? Fubar?) It’s the gastrojan horse massacre most either dunno or care about because they grew up on ‘em and by now it’s like the Pringles guy aptly put it (and 10 year old me can corroborate). In fact, I genuinely feel like he’s far better qualified to answer the million dollar question that one girl wonders out loud while eating some other brand of chips:
“What did they make this for?”
“Once you pop… you can’t stop…”
Yep.
Exactly how Requiem For a Dream ended.
Marion gives armless Leto the finger and cuddles her sack o’ smack instead.