A Rant about... Wheatabix
Most people think Wheatabix to be pretty non-objectionable - they’re crisp biscuits of wheat that you cover in milk then eat as a breakfast cereal. They are healthy, have lots of fibre and lack salt, sugar, fat and all the other demonic evils of the breakfast table.
But they are also agents of deception that try to sway the masses with their insidious evil! Why? Because they taste of bird’s nests marinated in sawdust. So what does your diet freak do when he or she (let’s face it, she) gets them home? Covers them in sugar in the vague hope that they may illicit even a minor response from a solitary taste bud - all the while they gleefully tell themselves it’s a healthy breakfast. Same with rivetas - crisp crackers that taste of… well, nothing. A lashing of cream cheese later and oooh look, healthy snack.
But you can’t blame Wheatabix for the stupidity of their consumers, I hear you cry (well, yes, you can, I can blame anyone for ANYTHING) but the crafty advertisers (cue demonic music) have realised that their cereal tastes like straw coated in carpet fluff so have started a campaign - the Wheatabix Week. Eat Wheatabix every day for a week trying out new toppings (has there ever been a product that has sold itself on the stance that it tastes so bad you have to disguise the flavour?) including HONEY AND ALMONDS! That’s right, enjoy your healthy breakfast slathered in honey.
It’s all part of the incredible amount of deception there is around ‘healthy’ eating because we’re all obsessed with losing weight - the fat want to be thinner, the chubby want to be slim, the slim want to be thinner and the thin want to be skeletal and the very thin want to be Callista Flockheart and Callista Flockheart wants to become one of the Undead. There’s gold in them thar diets! So advertisers are doing anything to convince us all that their product is healthy in so many ways.
We have the fancy science (because we’re all impressed by science stuff). This stuff as polypeptide good stuff! Flora has Polyunsaturates! Mums, are you worried about your kids getting enough Omega 3? And the consumers chant this as they plaster margarine on their bread. Do you even know what a polyunsaturated is (in a vague way I understand it means the fat molecule has double carbon bonds as opposed to lots of C-H bonds)? Do you know WHY it’s good? I don’t! But they’ve gone and let a multi-syllabic science word overcome their natural common sense that BUTTER IS FATTENING. And Omega 3? Worry about it?! Of all the many many many things that mother’s worry about I expect Omega 3 is not only last on the list but probably doesn’t even appear on the list. What is it? Oils found in oily fish? Even the scientists are divided and unsure as to its benefits!
Then we move on from the science to something which takes even less effort - after all, the advertisers (cue demonic music) have to throw a boffin a few pennies to get genuine science mumbo jumbo, but it costs nothing to plaster the word ‘light’ or ‘diet’ on the packaging. And people fall for it, women gleefully chew into their diet Sveltesse and Keloggs bars which are smothered in chocolate - it’s CHOCOLATE in no way, shape or form can it be anything LESS than fattening. That’s the whole POINT of chocolate! It’s what it DOES. It’s karma for fat people because you can look at all the skinny people and laugh “aha, that poor cow isn’t getting any chocolate!” Reduced fat? Well, yes, have you checked the SUGAR content? Ahaha, stealth calories! It’s the easiest trick in the book, take a high SUGAR product, reduce it by 0.2g of FAT then call it LIGHT and watch everyone chew away chanting “it’s healthy, it’s healthy” and pay an extra 10p for the privilege! Who needs pyramid scehemes? And ‘light’. Light? What it shines? It weighs less? It’s lighter than WHAT per se? “Oooh, it’s Flora LIGHT!” *slather another inch onto bread* “that means it’s healthy” NO It means it’s marginally less UNHEALTHY than butter. But the advertisers (cue demonic music) are onto a good thing here - slap the word diet on it and people will even convince themselves a can of coke is healthy.
And that leads us nicely to the next category that the advertisers (cue demonic music) have truly cleaned up on. HEALTH FOOD. Oh this is pay dirt! You get to combine everything - you have your vague science (friendly bacteria, anyone?) you get top plaster your packaging with lots of buzz words (healthy, light) and wrap it in fresh green wrappers and what do you get? Dasani! Bottled tap water for £1! (Shame about the Benzene). Benecol and Flora pro-active (HOW much are you paying for a tiny pot of yoghurt?) yoghurt drinks. People are paying 50% more for MILK with Omega 3 in it! And treble that for anything with soya in its name - you don't even KNOW why soya's supposed to be healthy, but damn it, you're told it is and those damn vegans are hiding something. Olive Oil! People spend a fortune on extra virgin olive oil, pour lashings of it everywhere, exclaiming how healthy it is all the while ignoring that it’s STILL COOKING FAT! You don’t even have to try and pretend for flavour any more, you can almost sell it as medicine.
And you know what’s so depressing about all of this? Anyone with half an ounce of sense can see through all this. These are people who wouldn’t accept that they’ve won the Reader’s Digest prize if the pope himself handed them the money in crisp 20s, all authenticated by the head of the Bank of England - but they’ll believe that chocolate is healthy because it has the word ‘light’ written on the wrapper? People SO want to believe it that they’re deceiving themselves *sigh*
And that is why I hate Wheatabix.
But they are also agents of deception that try to sway the masses with their insidious evil! Why? Because they taste of bird’s nests marinated in sawdust. So what does your diet freak do when he or she (let’s face it, she) gets them home? Covers them in sugar in the vague hope that they may illicit even a minor response from a solitary taste bud - all the while they gleefully tell themselves it’s a healthy breakfast. Same with rivetas - crisp crackers that taste of… well, nothing. A lashing of cream cheese later and oooh look, healthy snack.
But you can’t blame Wheatabix for the stupidity of their consumers, I hear you cry (well, yes, you can, I can blame anyone for ANYTHING) but the crafty advertisers (cue demonic music) have realised that their cereal tastes like straw coated in carpet fluff so have started a campaign - the Wheatabix Week. Eat Wheatabix every day for a week trying out new toppings (has there ever been a product that has sold itself on the stance that it tastes so bad you have to disguise the flavour?) including HONEY AND ALMONDS! That’s right, enjoy your healthy breakfast slathered in honey.
It’s all part of the incredible amount of deception there is around ‘healthy’ eating because we’re all obsessed with losing weight - the fat want to be thinner, the chubby want to be slim, the slim want to be thinner and the thin want to be skeletal and the very thin want to be Callista Flockheart and Callista Flockheart wants to become one of the Undead. There’s gold in them thar diets! So advertisers are doing anything to convince us all that their product is healthy in so many ways.
We have the fancy science (because we’re all impressed by science stuff). This stuff as polypeptide good stuff! Flora has Polyunsaturates! Mums, are you worried about your kids getting enough Omega 3? And the consumers chant this as they plaster margarine on their bread. Do you even know what a polyunsaturated is (in a vague way I understand it means the fat molecule has double carbon bonds as opposed to lots of C-H bonds)? Do you know WHY it’s good? I don’t! But they’ve gone and let a multi-syllabic science word overcome their natural common sense that BUTTER IS FATTENING. And Omega 3? Worry about it?! Of all the many many many things that mother’s worry about I expect Omega 3 is not only last on the list but probably doesn’t even appear on the list. What is it? Oils found in oily fish? Even the scientists are divided and unsure as to its benefits!
Then we move on from the science to something which takes even less effort - after all, the advertisers (cue demonic music) have to throw a boffin a few pennies to get genuine science mumbo jumbo, but it costs nothing to plaster the word ‘light’ or ‘diet’ on the packaging. And people fall for it, women gleefully chew into their diet Sveltesse and Keloggs bars which are smothered in chocolate - it’s CHOCOLATE in no way, shape or form can it be anything LESS than fattening. That’s the whole POINT of chocolate! It’s what it DOES. It’s karma for fat people because you can look at all the skinny people and laugh “aha, that poor cow isn’t getting any chocolate!” Reduced fat? Well, yes, have you checked the SUGAR content? Ahaha, stealth calories! It’s the easiest trick in the book, take a high SUGAR product, reduce it by 0.2g of FAT then call it LIGHT and watch everyone chew away chanting “it’s healthy, it’s healthy” and pay an extra 10p for the privilege! Who needs pyramid scehemes? And ‘light’. Light? What it shines? It weighs less? It’s lighter than WHAT per se? “Oooh, it’s Flora LIGHT!” *slather another inch onto bread* “that means it’s healthy” NO It means it’s marginally less UNHEALTHY than butter. But the advertisers (cue demonic music) are onto a good thing here - slap the word diet on it and people will even convince themselves a can of coke is healthy.
And that leads us nicely to the next category that the advertisers (cue demonic music) have truly cleaned up on. HEALTH FOOD. Oh this is pay dirt! You get to combine everything - you have your vague science (friendly bacteria, anyone?) you get top plaster your packaging with lots of buzz words (healthy, light) and wrap it in fresh green wrappers and what do you get? Dasani! Bottled tap water for £1! (Shame about the Benzene). Benecol and Flora pro-active (HOW much are you paying for a tiny pot of yoghurt?) yoghurt drinks. People are paying 50% more for MILK with Omega 3 in it! And treble that for anything with soya in its name - you don't even KNOW why soya's supposed to be healthy, but damn it, you're told it is and those damn vegans are hiding something. Olive Oil! People spend a fortune on extra virgin olive oil, pour lashings of it everywhere, exclaiming how healthy it is all the while ignoring that it’s STILL COOKING FAT! You don’t even have to try and pretend for flavour any more, you can almost sell it as medicine.
And you know what’s so depressing about all of this? Anyone with half an ounce of sense can see through all this. These are people who wouldn’t accept that they’ve won the Reader’s Digest prize if the pope himself handed them the money in crisp 20s, all authenticated by the head of the Bank of England - but they’ll believe that chocolate is healthy because it has the word ‘light’ written on the wrapper? People SO want to believe it that they’re deceiving themselves *sigh*
And that is why I hate Wheatabix.