Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for April 05, 2011

Genius, once again!

Petey eats Healthy flavorless foods?

Boy am I glad I’m not him.

That’s Mom’s involvement, else it would be even worse.

Yeah, confinement loaf; boy but I miss Frank and the Mothers!

Bleh is right!

Today I feel really sorry for Mom, a kid like Alice really shouldn’t be the easy child.

BLEH…the food must be really tastless!!

Kooks

It must be made by a British chef.

One of three foods officially approved by the International Order of Picky Eaters.

“What’s the point of eating if there’s no flavour?”

Any sort of sensory stimulation gives Petey angst. Eating at all is a necessary evil, just fuel for the machine.

Running Chef Blandoni’s products through an IV line would be cumbersome (besides, it involves a needle), but maybe they come in a patch. That would bypass the mouth entirely, and since patches would provide a steady influx of nutrients he wouldn’t have to interrupt his important schedule of inactivity for meal breaks.

If Petey weren’t put off so much by dirt and sunshine, I’d recommend he try photosynthesis; in many ways that would be ideal for him.

You can get a once-a-year calcium supplement injection – Petey needs to try a once-a-year nutrient injection. The needle would be less painful than eating, for him anyway…

tasteless healthy food like substance, i remember those from my days in the military

Went on a scout backpacking trip where that was the only food we had.

I have vivid memories of dropping balls of pseudo-butterscotch pudding off a cliff to see whose would bounce the highest.

Years ago I read a book called “Scandinavian Humor and Other Myths”, a Lake-Wobegon-like satire of the Norwegians and Swedes living in and around Minnesota.

Two chapters were about food: One was titled “Food Whiteners”, describing things that could be added to a dish to remove the color; and the other chapter was “Foods That Hurt”, which warned against Italian, Mexican, Indian, and Szechuan Chinese food.

Could Petey have Scandinavian genes?

That’s what all processed food would taste like without all the salt and artificial flavorings..And without the artificial colors it’d be a lovely shade of bleahg!

^^pschearer

Ludefisk & lefsa!!!

uffda!

If the 12 varieties are “very similar” the implication is that they are nonetheless “not quite identical”, and it’s a good bet that Petey refuses to eat at least half of them…

sounds like most diet food

I saw the punchline coming, because the setup reminded me of something in the title sequence for Futurama:

“Bachelor Chow: now with flavor.”

That wouldn’t resemble my chow, ArthurAllen. This bachelor (moi) has good taste - and so does my chow.

Are you sure this won’t hurt his ratings on the Picky Eater scale?

^ That’s the big question, isn’t it? If a food is specifically designed to target the Picky Eater demographic, would one’s rating be better served by insiting upon it or by rejecting it?

An argument could be made either way. The algorithm for the calculations has never been made public, but I’ve identitied at least three variables:

Exclusivity: Will you eat nothing other than these foods?

Purity: Is the food choice inherently bland/uncomplicated/overly complicated?

Difficulty: How much trouble must you or another go to in order to obtain the food choice?

The last of these seems to me to be worthy of the least weight, since it’s the least objective, but it still seems to be considerable. If one will eat nothing other than saltine crackers, that is both simple and exclusive but saltine crackers are readily available. But if one will only eat a particular brand of saltine crackers that are only obtainable at great cost from a Norwegian Imports store twenty miles from home, it’s a tremendously inconvenient quality to satisfy, and therefor spikes one’s Picky Eater rating. On the other hand, a would-be Picky Eater in Norway could eat precisely the same thing but not gain the Difficulty premium, since those same saltines would be more easily obtained.

(This is why the common refusal to eat a sandwich unless the crusts are removed is the time-honored hallmark of Gustatory Pickiness; it makes the sandwich Less Complicated, but it involves active inconvenience of preparation; regardless of what’s on the sandwich, it simultaneously boosts two of the variables.)

My own Global Picky-Eater ranking is impressive, but I’ve never risen above the 90th percentile. I do well on Exclusivity and Purity (the few things I’ll willingly eat are relatively uncomplicated), but they’re available in any supermarket, and involve little more than opening a can and/or operating a microwave oven.

Society has gotten out of control with food.