Liquid Water Flavour enhancer, mhhmmmm

Michael Pollan has a great link today to a press release out of Kraft Foods about an exciting new product:

    MiO, which means “mine” in Italian, complements the desires of its
    18-to-39 “Generation Next” target group, allowing them to customise their
    everyday experiences, claims the company.
    Liza Laibe, MiO senior brand manager, told BeverageDaily.com:
    “MiO answers this wish to personalize life’s experiences in a way no
      other beverage can”.

MiO is essentially sugar free cordial, and not, as you may have assumed from the above quotes, the answer to all lifes questions and liquid ecstacy. The reason I am writing this up in 3Votes is really to highlight the insane language that has taken a hold of the companies that once simply produced our food. I dont want my beverages to personalise my life experience, I want them to quench my thirst. I dont need my everyday experiences customised, I just want my food to come from the ground and taste delicious. This is a rather new phenomenon in the food industry that used to rely massively on classical food descriptors to sell us frozen reconfigured mush, as "Fresh, golden, brown and delicious."  They seemed to have moved into their own world, no longer is Kraft trying to convince us MiO is a natural experience, now its a super natural experience. Lookout water, it look's like youre about to get done in, by a fat toothpaste tube!

And then there were three

Finally finished my 3rd planter, which for the time being is all I'm going to build. So lets hope PLANTERTRON 3000, PLANTMAX 6000 and DAVID all get on well. Next step is to track down someone who wants to give me a tonne and a half of dirt for free, preferably delivered.

This week in food

This week I managed to catch an awesome program out of Channel 4 in the UK called "Eataholics" The premise of the program is to take someone with massive food phobias or a hugely selective diet and engage them with a nutritionist and a psychologist to find the root cause of their problem and help them work towards a healthier diet. I am not usually a fan of the voyeuristic but this program gives a really fascinating insight into one of the major concerns with a modern western diet, and that's the decreasing diversity in our diet. Even as the number of items in our supermarkets increase, more and more of these are simply reconfigurations of the same basic staples, paired with fat, sugar and salt. It also highlights the advanced psychological role food plays in our wellbeing, from creating a sense of community, to the role of comfort foods and our childhood diet. Well worth a watch.