What is Happening to Our Food?

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

The other day, I was in Trader Joe’s purchasing all the boring food items I eat every week but never talk about, because they’re boring and food is also, largely boring: spinach, eggs, almond milk, bananas, bread, almonds, berries, chicken (white meat), tofu (not meat), and coffee (always coffee, lots of coffee).

I was walking down the cereal/dried fruit/tea aisle and saw peppermint vegan mini marshmallows. What in the actual fucking universe inspires someone to make tiny pink, vaguely pepperminted marshmallows? Are we supposed to feel cheer? Are we supposed to celebrate the holiday season with a cup of brown sugar water (cocoa) topped with pink sugar pellets (marshmallows), and sigh deeply and feel that the world is finally, blessedly right?

I was confused, and felt, suddenly, that I did not belong here, in a healthy-ish food store that sells sugar pellets under the guise of holiday cheer, with dozens of zombie people filling their baskets with fake foods and not even realizing that the food they’re eating isn’t supposed to exist. Tiny, peppermint vegan marshmallows aren’t real, but this is a world that believes they are real simply because they are here. I can hold them in my hand, read a long list of indecipherable ingredients, eat them if I want to, and so, they must be real. I was very…