The icebergs bloomed white and furiously craggy on top of their cold sea, jostling into one another and relinquishing great powdery sheets of white with every collision. Every movement underneath them was tectonic in magnitude and shook both the white formations and their ocean, roiling the liquid and sending the whole floating structures asunder. And then came the heat of the microwave for 45 long seconds, which, aggravating the water molecules in the coffee such that they became pleasantly heated, caused the icebergs of powdered creamer to finally surrender to the drink and melt away.
I thought, pouring the creamer, that it was unnerving how a substance we trust to simulate a fresh, dairy liquid in hot beverages reacted so frightfully different in a cold, stale beverage. Instead of dissolving to taste like milk, the creamer clumped into great arctic structures, bubbling and unnaturally staying quite the opposite of liquid. No amount of stirring would make it dissolve, I noted; only the application of heat to the liquid underneath the powder would cause the creamer to become rightfully assimilated.
This behavior caused me to put into question the trustworthiness of all simulations of real things. In our age of organic, free-range, all-natural hyper-frenzy rivaling the high-fructose-corn-syrup, prepackaged-and-unnatural mass-produced-camp, it gets a little tiring if you are the slightest bit complacent about both. I guess that’s me. While I cut high-fructose corn syrup out of my diet, sometimes, given no other choice, I’ll still eat it. Also, while I enjoy the benefits of organic, pesticide-free or otherwise natural food, I don’t enjoy the ghastly cost most stores foist upon the trendy products bearing that green sticker. As usual, there’s no happy medium for producers. Because that’s what it comes down to: producing in order to sell.
Why did crappy food take over anyway? People wanted it. Lots of it. Producers had to keep up with soaring demand, and, thanks to the newest technology of the day, preservatives and high-fructose corn-syrup, they found a way. Plastic wrappings, Styrofoam boxes, and any other cheap means of covering the food was also included. Mass production was the way of the future! The way of progress! The way of America!
But then people (thankfully) woke up and said, what is this filth we’re eating? It’s nothing but sugar, and bad sugar, at that! It’s all sugar. And fat. And starch. Maybe some fortified vitamins thrown in for fun, but mostly those three things. And those three things, if you haven’t noticed, don’t treat the body with much respect. Well, fast forward to today and here you have the newest craze: health, of all things! Of all the things to be trendy, it’s being healthy!
Think about it objectively if you can ignore the cries of beeves from the slaughter-houses: being healthy is popular, just like smoking was popular in the 60s or buying war bonds was popular in the 40s or just plain staying alive was popular in the 1600s (and through most of history). It’s the fad of an age. Maybe, in 25 years, we’ll all go back to eating crappy food-because it’s trendy. Ho-hos, tacos, twinkies, and deep-fried hamburgers. With artificial hearts, who has to worry about cardiovascular health anymore?
I think, at least for now, though, I’ll train myself to live without powdered creamer. No more coffee icebergs for me. I’m one step closer to trendy and two steps farther from the past. Now if only I could quit eating prepackaged cake icing by the spoonful…
