Thursday, August 23, 2007

Whut's New

Well, not much really.

The family went to the Inniswood Metro Garden park in Westerville the past weekend and saw the Big Bugs exhibit. That was pretty cool. I'd never been to the Inniswood before and I have to say they keep the grounds up very nicely. This probably has to do with it being a Metro Parks Garden rather than a Park. At first we didn't even think that you could picnic there, however, there is a small area on the other side of the parking lot where there are a couple of picnic tables. We had KFC. It was tasty. I should post some pics, but I don't have them at my disposal at the moment. So I guess you'll just have to go yourself.

I have J&D Basement Systems coming to my house tonight after work. That should be interesting. I'm sure they will tell me all sorts of crap that's wrong with my house, at which point I will curls up into the far corner of the crawl space and cry.

I'm looking at this can of 'Mug Root Beer' and notice a couple of things. Right below the BIG BOLD LETTERS of MUG ROOT BEER, in smaller white font is says 'soda'. I find that funny. As if anyone would actually think that it is beer. The second thing I notice is that at the bottom is says 'NOCAFFINE'. It pretty much looks like that is just one word. Nocaffeine. Maybe that's the sweet n' low version of caffeine or something? The thrid thing I notice is the spelling of caffeine. For a very very long time, i've left out that middle 'e' and wrote it as caffine. Seems logical to me. Oh wait, I'm using the English language which means that everything is as confusing as it possibly can be.

---- cranky old man rant below ----

On a food side note, all of the warnings on food is starting to get on my nerves. There have been allergies to all sorts of shit since the beginning of time. I'm sure in this high-tech 'make them brighter, bigger, grow faster, etc' era we live in it is more wide-spread. I, for instance, used to eat apples all the time. Then about 5 years ago, I ate an apple at work and my throat pretty much swelled shut. I haven't been able to eat raw apples since. Apples sauce is fine. Apple butter is fine. So it probably has everything to do with either what they spray the apples with now or the super shiny wax they put on them.

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about. I'm talking about the warnings. For example, on a can of Diet Pepsi (and just about every other diet soda) you see Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine. That one almost makes sense to have on their. Almost. If you are a person who suffers from phenylketonuria , then odds are you know that anything that contains aspartame contains that which you are allergic to. I know it's supposed to help these people not have to read all the ingredients to see what they are allergic to. I get that. But when I see a jar of peanut butter which has a warning on it that is "Contains: Peanuts", then I start getting a little bit irked. No f'ing shit Sherlock that peanut butter contains peanuts. If you have a peanut allergy and aren't smart enough to figure out that peanut butter contains peanuts, well then, sucks to be you. Same goes for milk. It should be no surprise that a bar of Hershey's Milk Chocolate contains milk. And it shouldn't be any real surprise that it's manufactured where peanuts are also handled.

Where am I going with this? Sometimes, I think warning are going too far. Yeah, I get it that some people can possibly die from eating peanuts. It sucks to be them cause, damn, p-nut butter and Reese Cups rule only slightly less than bacon. But milk? Give me a break. Most people aren't going to keel over because they have some milk. They might get an upset stomach sure. But hell, they've even proven that people can acclimate themselves to milk. On the other hand, my mother has ciliac. That basically means that she can't process gluten. That would be found in wheat and oats and barley and other woody grains, genius. But I don't think I've seen a loaf of bread with a warning on it claiming "Contains: Wheat" or "Glutenurics: Contains gluten". She can't process gluten, period. There is no ability to acclimate to it. Plus, it causes your body to not absorb much of the nutrients that you do need. She was sick for a very long time. But she doesn't need a freaking warning spelled out to her to tell her what and what not to eat. She reads the ingredients and if she sees 'wheat flour', she puts the shit back on the shelf.

There are people with allergies to just about anything. Some people break out into a rash if they waer clothes with fabric softener on them.

What I'm getting at, is that if list everything that someone might be allergic to, the odds are that we would end up listing the ingredients all over again. So what's the point. Know your illness and know what you can or can't eat.

In hind sight, I can see where maybe the 'is manufactured in the same plant as peanuts'. Maybe. That wouldn't be listed in the ingredients and so I can see how it would be useful to people with severe peanut allergies. I'm not that much of a sour-puss grumpy old man. But if the freakin' product has peanuts listed in the ingredients and you have an allergy to peanuts and you still choose to eat the darn thing, then that's your own fault.

BTW, I'm glad my wife doesn't have a peanut allergy cause then I would have to get a tattoo on my head that says "May contain peanuts". I loves my peanut butter.

This concludes my cranky old man rant for this week. Tune in next week when I complain about the use of the cloverleaf interchange as a means of making entering and exiting the highway 'safer'. :-)

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