Ou new yummy line, the Peeled Snacks Fruit Picks & Nut Picks, will soon find its way to the Shelves of Whole Foods and, soon after, other retailers.  Gobs of research and testing have gone into this line as we've asked everybody we could find what they'd like in the new line.  Multi-pacls were at the top of the list, so we're going to take our snacks, pick the best ones, and bundle them together with....

....with tape?  With cardboard?  With plastic cartons?  With WHAT?!?!  Well, how about with CORN?!?!

Ain't that just ironic?  Here we are, a company of corn HATERS, a company that constantly rails and rages against the caustic impact that corn is having in our society, and suddenly we're considering wrapping our new snacks in a squished down, processed version of said wrecker of homes and waist lines.  I've probably blogged about corn horror, oh, 8 times this year, but now I'm here to extole the GLORIES of corn?

Well, you can't hate your corn and eat it too, can you?  In this new line, we were really looking to make the packaging in as responsible a way as possible, which to us meant "compostable".  As angry as I get at corn, plastic sucks equally if not even more suck-tastically.  So we tracked down NaturesPLAstics, which makes a corn based, compostable pack that's clear and sturdy like the kinds of clam-shell plastic cases that you get in salad bars.

Great, splendid, problem solved-our customers get their multipacks, which in turn get turned into plantfood, which in turn gets eaten by, you know, "plants", and the "Circle of Life" warms all our hearts and brings peace to the Middle East, and even makes Dick Cheney see the light and buy everyone Christmas Turkeys.  Good, glad that's finished, now we can just ship it all to Whole Foods and watch the money and peace and happiness roll in....

But WAIT!!!  Yesterday we got the word from one of our buyers at Whole Foods that they won't take these corn-tastic wonders of packaging design because Whole Foods isn't sure whether or not they're.....

...made with Genetically Modified Corn!

Gasp!  You mean, we can't use compostable corn products because the corn may have been tainted in some scientist's laboratory?  Because nature hate's unfair competition?  Because cross-pollination might lead to a race of super-intelligent Corn-Monsters that enslave humanity, coat us with butter, and nibble us in rows or pop us giant air-popper machines.....?

We're crossing culturally into a strange battleground, one with a hundred armies on the field, none of who know whom to fight.  Should we protect American labor, or promote 3rd world economies?  Should we provide food for the neediest, or only eat local?  Should everything be bio-degradeable, or should everything be made of untainted material?  And while none of these questions are "either/or," nobody gets to have it both ways.

But, in fact, Whole Foods gets to have it their way.  With that response, we quickly put the Kibosh on the corn-based packaging, for better or worse.  Instead we'll use something that either breeds war in the Middle East (petro-chemicals), or is making it harder to breath (cardboard).  Boy, it sure is tough to have a bleeding heart these days.  Nobody wants to clean up the blood stains....

On an entirely other note, a great British organization has contacted Peeled Snacks about getting the word out about safely managing weight.  They've a website, entitled (obviously enough) http://www.safeslimming.co.uk/,  and it's got some juicy advice.  I especially appreciate their insights about sugar, but I'm sort of an anti-sugar junkie....