Say Cheez!

My weekend trip to the grocery store left me with some deep questions about the meaning of life. OK, not life exactly. How about the meaning of food labels? Seriously. Do you have any idea what the following food-packaging terms mean?

Boneless ribs: Isn't a rib, by definition, a bone? That's what I thought. But who would pay $2.49 a pound for a Styrofoam tray of  meat labeled "Really Fatty Hunks of Raw Pork that Aren't Big Enough to Sell as a Roast"? I wouldn't. Slap two of my favorite meat-related words on the package though --boneless right next to ribs--and I'll buy eight pounds of it without batting an eyelash. Brilliant.

Fat Free Sour Cream (not to mention Fat Free Half and Half): Hold on. Implicit in the very concept of Sour Cream is the presence of, uh, cream. And we all know that cream is just a fancy word for FAT. Ain't no such thing as fat-free fat. So for the sake of accuracy, this white substance in the cute cow-spotted tub should be called "Sour Cream Free Sour Cream." Which begs the question--WHAT AM I ACTUALLY EATING? I probably don't want to know.

Froot: (an all-purpose fun misspelling used as a prefix for other exciting words like loops, snacks, and the super-snappy by-the-foot) If the FDA won't even allow the term "fruit" on the box, doesn't that give us a clue? Froot is actually code for "high-fructose-corn-syrup-plus-artificial-coloring." Now that's a naturally wholesome snack. Think "Five-A-Day". How can you tell if you're eating real fruit or froot? Hint: Fruit will never turn your teeth blue.

Cheez: (another useful prefix, commonly paired with It or Whiz)  The wonder-child who thought of froot got promoted from the snack department and wham! Another brilliant word twinkles in the food-aisle firmament. But don't be fooled by the phonetic similarities. Cheez is not, by any stretch of the imagination, cheese. In fact, I don't think it can even legitimately count as food--unless your definition of "food" is broad enough to include artificially flavored petroleum products. Hint: If it comes in a can with a push button, it's not cheese. But cheez has its place. One squeeze will lubricate that squeaky hinge or the sprocket on your bicycle--in bacon or sharp flavor.

I'm out of time, and we haven't even scratched the surface. So many questions left unanswered: Jello-- salad or dessert? Who named them "sweetbreads?" Does the Cap'n Crunch box really have more nutritional value than the cereal inside? All this philosophical effort makes me hungry. I think I'll go fix myself a frooty-cheezy-fat-free-boneless snack.Yum.