What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
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   Tuesday, December 17, 2002

mmmm....SOY.....

I think it was about a decade ago that we all discovered oat bran, wasn't it? Some study came along that showed a link between oat bran and lower cholesterol rates and, suddenly, it seemed every food product on the market had oat bran in it (leaving only Crystal Pepsi, and we still don't know what the hell was in that). Now it's soy protein, which I can eat every morning in my Vector cereal after pouring Soy Good "organic beverage" over it.

While postponing dinner for Christmas shopping this evening, I stopped at a potato chip rack where I spotted a bag of new Glenny's Low Fat Onion & Garlic Soy Crisps. Not having to say all that out loud saved me some time as I decided to risk a bag. Any snack food that lists organic broccoli as an ingredient deserves a chance, no? They look unique -- brown discs with white bubbles of rice and green speckles -- but the sea salt prevents them from being nearly flavourless (onion and garlic, my ass!), reminding me that trade wars were once fought over salt with good reason.

At $1.99 for a tiny 37g bag, I won't be leaping to buy them again but I was pleased that, according to the bag, I was getting 20% percent of my daily iron intake, 10g of that precious soy protein and a whopping 40g of soy isoflavones. I'd be more impressed if that last bit didn't sound like something out of 'Star Trek' ("We can neutralize the Borg virus with 40g of soy isoflavones, Captain!").

With those criminally-fatty potato chips less than half the price but still delicious, I hope the mysterious Glenny and friends can get their healthy snacks into more stores for less cost. And, assuming that is the very cool Maurice Vellekoop illustrating their way-happy website, I'm ready to cheer them on -- provided they bump up the garlic.

As a weird postscript, I poked my head into a Gateway store to compare the size of a bag of potato chips. The man behind the counter -- a shorter, rounder Zero Mostel lookalike -- grunted something at me and, almost as an Eaton Centre reflex, I said, "Just looking, thanks." "What are you looking for?" he barked, so I tried to be cute and said, "No, it's okay, I was seeing if anything yelled 'eat me!'" After the silence, I added, "You know." One look at his face told me he didn't know. "You need a vibrator," he said, "That would schleeze you." I could feel my entire forehead scrunch up like an accordian, as I lamely said, "I'm sorry, what?" "You need a vibrator," he repeated, "That would schleeze you." Alrighty, I thought, he did indeed say all that. Not knowing what to say or why, I felt back on my old motto: when in doubt, be blunt. "That's a very odd thing to say," I told him. He just looked at me, with no discernable expression on his face. And then my second old motto: when blunt doesn't work, get the hell out. I turned, walked off and resumed my Christmas shopping, making a mental note to check if 'schleeze' is in the dictionary.