Greetings Snackers,

And yet, this blog deals with something somewhat non-snack oriented.   If you're the type who only likes to read about the latest in snack foods, look elsewhere.  If your mind is open to all things even tangentially snack related, read on....

So this weekend I was out and about looking for a power cable for something or other.  Upon taking my power cable to the checkout counter, I paid and asked the checkout lady not to put my purchase in a plastic bag.  She put it in a bag, so I said, "no bag".  She handed the bag to me, so I took the cable out of the bag and said, "I don't need a bag".  She looked at me quizically and asked....

"Why don't you want a bag?"....

Indeed, why wouldn't any of us want to have a lovely plastic bag?  Particularly when we've only bought one item which is destined for our backpack?  In a culture full of pre-packaged goods,  everything seems to come wrapped in plastic, from vegetables and grocery products to Laura Palmer.  With such over-use of air-tight sealing, why on earth would anybody need an EXTRA layer of plastic?

To take the purchased items home, in theory.   But what added value is a plastic bag when another bag, perhaps a less disposable bag, could do the same work without the dubious conclusion (i.e. get thrown out)?  I suppose that a plastic bag offers the buyer the chance to only have to lug a bag, ANY bag, only half of the trip (the TO half).  But the other half the buyer spends praying that said flimsy plastic bag might break.  Not fun.

When was it that plastic bags became a ubiquitous part of our culture?  As a child of the 70s (i.e. Star Wars Rocks!), I only recall paper bags at grocery stories until well into Reagan's days.  Somewhere in there, I suppose, some well meaning folk decided that cutting down trees to make bags was a wasteful, cruel idea, thus switching the a grocery store bagger's job from unfolding brown paper to unfluffling white plastic.

Plastic shopping bags are almost all made from Ethylene, which is a petrochemical.  By petrochemical, I mean, "Crushed, pressed dinosaur", since petrochemicals come from crude oil, which comes from dinosaurs, crushed, pulverized, and pressed by the earth for 50 million years.  Every plastic bag in your home may have once been a triceratops baby, or a pteradactyl wing.

When it comes to consumer packaged goods, I understand the use of plastic to preserve food.  There's even an environmental argument to be made- the antiseptic conditions created by plastic food packaging promotes health and well being in the species, cutting down on wasteful disease and insuring that the the health industry doesn't cut down even MORE trees in order to print even MORE medical bills.

But there's no environmental argument for plastic bags, and a slew of arguments against them.  Point in case: a recent trip to India showed my thousands, millions, HUNDREDS of millions of Indias with no concept of litter- everything just went on the ground.  That was fine while everything was paper products, because cows and pigs can eat and enjoy all the paper bags that they want.  Plastic bags, however, look just as tasty as paper bags to an unsuspecting bovine, though they have a truly dreadful impact on any one of the for stomachs trying and failing to digest said bag.

That, and the thought of smooshing and pressing a baby brontosaurus so as to more conveniently carry my groceries home just sort of grosses me out.  Apparently others are grossed out as well- Whole Foods recently made a killing selling $15 shopping bags to gullible New Yorkers, and San Francisco just made the darn things ILLEGAL!  That's a lot of baby brontosauruses they're saving.

I just don't get it- when did it become a good idea to put everything in plastic bags, and why?  If you have a good idea as to why, post it in a comment, and I'll send you some free snacks.  Actual credible reasons will also receive a free t-shirt.  T-shirts will come wrapped in plastic.... 

Posted by iankusc at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When was the last time you chomped down on an apple?  Okay, if you don't dig apples in their most "apple-ish" form, when was the last time you ate Apple Jacks, or an Apple Strudel?  It's getting to be apple season, and the produce aisles of supermarkets are piled high with those tasty red, green and yellow orbs.  But none of those succulent spheres would be here without BEES!

No, that's not a handful of raisins- that's a pile of dead bees scooped up by an Oregon farmer, and for 3 years such entomological horror shows have been found with increasing frequency across North America.  While bee hating children might rejoice at the news, apple lovers ought to cringe- every apple you ever ate was pollinated by a bee, and if bees take a trip down do-do way, so do Johnny Appleseed's children.

Here at Peeled Snacks World Headquarters, we've been following this Bee story for some time, all the while our eyes flitting nervously and our necks sweating bullets, because if bees all die, well, so does many of our ingredients (almonds, fruit, peaches, PLUOTS!!!).  When some of our farmer-friends have reported bee shortages, we've actually offered to pollinate the trees ourselves.  We try our best not to be offended that nobody took us up on that generous offer.

This lack of Bee-ness is actually very serious business for us, and, frankly, for any American that likes to eat "food".  So much produce relies upon bee pollination that a prolonged absence of bees might empty supermarkets' fruit aisles, not to mention punish the hard-working American fruit farmer.  Furthermore, many have worried that the bee die-offs portends to looming environmental disaster, which scares more than farmers and snack magnates.

When last I made my way through California's Central Valley (the source of most of our fruit & nuts), I noted a ridiculous increase in the number of chain linked fences.  I asked one of my farmer friends, "what's with all the new fences?"  He replied that some entomologists theorized that the bees were dying off due to increased cell-phone signals, which chain link fences disrupt.  Break up the signals, save the bees, or so the theory goes.

Seemed unlikely, but chain link fences are a cheap way to save America (though they won't do too much on the Mexican border, I'm afraid).  Last Thursday, however, researchers published a new theory as to the cause of the bee deaths.  Turns out, right about the time the bees started dying, beekeepers began importing Australian Bees, who, it turns out, are carriers for the vicious , bee-killing Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus!

So bee-keepers were re-enacting their own little colonization of the new world (complete with the common cold, which wiped out most of the Indian populations), and unbeknownst to them causing the largest insect genocide since the Summer of 1983 when my friends and I declared war on all 17 year locusts.   Native American Bees welcomed the Australians with plates of nectar and sweet potatoes, only to wind up coughing themselves to death shortly thereafter.

Let's hope that this new information will help entomologists and farmers find a way to save our bee populations.  I worry, though, that the card carrying members of the North American Bee Union (NABU) will have their jobs replaced by beer swilling, kangaroo eating bees who fly upside down and, instead of buzzing, make an annoying "Oi oi oi!" sound.

To learn more about the bees' colony collapse, go HERE.  Read all about the study HERE.  And then pray they find a cure.  I find it appropriate to deliver some semi-apocalyptic news today, since it is September 11th.  To think that just 6 years ago, Americans received the support and good will of the world.  And now we receive truly killer bees.

Posted by iankusc at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)