How do you like your snacks?  Do you like them salty, or sweet?  Do you like them healthy, or sinful?  Do you snack for flavor, or to fill the belly?  What's your favorite snack, and what's your least favorite? Everyone'll have a different answer, as everybody (and every BODY) has his/her/its own tastes and needs.  But lately, this crazy health-food trend has taken on conventional ideas about snacks and snacking, and those of us trying to help the hungry masses survive from 4pm till the end of work are scrambling to keep up.

Thus I submit to you a noble attempt by our friends at Frito Lay to make a buck off this crazy health stuff.  Please be warned that the following article contains vulgar language...

Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line Of Healthy Snacks

Snacking trends are tough to keep up with, so hats off to Frito-Lay for getting on the bland/healthy bandwagon.  For the record, though, this article raises a doozy of a conundrum faced by all of us snack manufacturers- how do you deal with social or cultural trends that contradict basic biology? We are (all of us that might read this blog, anyway) basically overgrown monkeys (or divine creations, if you prefer), and we all somehow are programmed at a very deep level to savor salt, crave fat, and slurp up sugar whenever possible.  And NONE of those cravings are met by particle-board-like parsnip crisps.

In a strange way, I feel for the beleaguered and bitter Frito-Lay CEO Carey as he rails against health nuts and their unwanted impact upon his products.  We struggle right now against the Whole Foods mandate that none of the food they sell (except their red wine) contain sulfites.  Please don't get me started on sulfites.  I'll simply say that 90% of what I hear about sulfites is just wrong, and unless you have asthma, you have nothing to fear from the SMIDGE of sulfites in our products.

And yet, here we are, preparing to roll out a sulfite-free product come January or February, solely to cater to unfounded food trends.  Sigh.

Here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters we regularly scrutinize our competition (as ought every good corporation).  We comb through snack racks and bins at the check-out counters, looking for trends, new products, and updates to classic snacks (like last January's  "Doritos Bag" update.  Frankly, we're all still in shock).  Everyone here had their own sort of "snack specialty"- there's the trail mix chick, the everything-with-seeds lady, the candy girl; I count as the chips and crisps dude.  Lucky me.

Any irony you might find in a bunch of healthy-snack peddlers eating blatantly awful snacks, please keep to yourself.  It's important to know what the kids are noshing on these days, and insights gained from seeing the bright colors behind the glass at a vending machine simply DO NOT COMPARE to actually tasting the lurid staleness within.  Most of the snacks we buy to try go uneaten, either because we have other snacks to try, or because they're just gross.

One final note- congrats to the Democratic Party, who (thanks to the endless campaigning and leadership of George W. Bush) have just taken over 1/3 of our government.  I recommend that, whatever happens in the next two years, you all DON'T SCREW IT UP!!!!

An Ode to Frito-Lay

I'm pretty sure that they put that salty powder on there

on purpose.

They coat their chips and curls with grains of flavor

and salt,

and after every cheetoh moves from oranged fingers

to mouth,

I must wash my cheetoh grabbing digits clean with my lips

and tongue.

Should perhaps I worry about my saliva-coated fingers

and thumb,

when sharing my Doritos, Cheetohs, or lime-drenched Tostitos,

so addictive?

Or does that orange and yellow dust somehow cauderize

all hands?

I think I'd rather not know, and just finish

my bag.