SmartFood, You're Fucking STOOPID!

So, I'm in Ye Olde Supermarket this morning, just minding my own business. Well, not really. I was there actually spying on the nuts and bolts of all the shiz they sell there. See, part of my "bizness" includes a tour of our local food emporiums, showing those folks that are "not-in-the-know" all the crazy business that goes on there, and all the ways The Man tries to trick us into buying stuff that is baaaaaad for us and otherwise manipulate our tired little minds.

Like this little trick. I took a moment to point out to a sweet elderly couple how the store tries to trick them into purchasing the store brand of, well, everything. We read from left to right, and when we look at something our eyes automatically drift to the right. Like when we look at a scrumptious box of cereal.

From the Cheerios, to the Cardboard-in-a-Box that is generic....

The Oldsters were intrigued, but then tried to distract me from my mission with questions about the benefits of Cornflakes vs: Shreddies. I mumbled something fibre related and escaped.
And then, it happened. I stumbled on what is likely the most awful, the most decpetive, the most cringe-worthy product I have seen on the shelves in a loooong while:

SMARTFOOD.

EGAD! It makes my pubic hair stand on end just thinking that some misguided parental type will believe that this is a "Smart Food" to give their chubby little progeny. Let's turn this box around and eyeball the specifics:

These little bags 'o crap are billed as "popcorn clusters, chocolate cookie caramel pecan", (naturally flavored, naturally.) The box sells for $3.49 for six individual bags of 28 grams apiece.

The website touts the benefits of this product as including the following stellar atributes:

"TransFat Free!" (Who cares? It still has 3.5 grams of fat that's still going to go straight to your thighs.)

"Porcine Free!" (WTF??? Why would I expect my popcorn to contain swine by-products anyway??)

"Onion Free!" (Again, what are you people smoking? Not only is onion allergy not exactly a growing problem, to me, this is akin to advertising Tomato Soup as being Free of Chocolate.)

"Excellent Source of Calcium!" (Excuse me? Unless I am mental, the Nutrition Facts list this item as having ZERO PERCENT of your daily calcium. Explain, please?? Especially since the ingredients, that I will helpfully list here, contain the following:

"Brown Rice Syrup, (sugar) Inulin (fake added fibre), popcorn, chocolate cookie, (enriched wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil, cocoa powder, modified corn starch, molasses, salt, natural flavour) sugar, pecans, soy lecithin, natural flavours, salt."

I don't see much on this list that makes me scream "High Source of calcium!" Maybe I'm wrong. Do you??

I DO see four different sugars and some oil though. Smart of them to put that much sugar in there to soak up the grease, eh?

The box itself only really promotes the "High Fibre" angle, five whole grams per greasy little bag! Let's compare, for shits and giggles, the stats for this product compared to plain old air popped popcorn, (28 grams of which would likely cost you, oh, 5 cents maybe?)

1 pack Smart Food has 130 calories.

28 gm popcorn has 110 calories (bit is also over 3 cups of food compared to a tiny palmful of this stuff)

1 pack Smart Food has 3.5 grams of fat, .5 of which is saturated.

Air popped corn has 1.3 grams.

1 pack Smart Food has 8 grams of sugar.

Three cups of popcorn has 0.2

1 pack Smart Food has 5 grams of fibre.

Three cups of popcorn has 4.1, plus you can eat ever so much more of it because it's cheap as dirt.

1 pack Smart Food has 80 mg of sodium.

The popcorn has like, TWO.

SmartFood (and your satanic manufacturer Frito Lay), hereby win my weekly prize for the ShitHole Company of the week for attempting to convince decent, if uninformed, hard working folks that your overprocessed crap is actually healthy for them. No goddamn wonder kids are porky these days. Shame on you....