Every morning I take a spin through the Haight Street Market and pick myself up breakfast (Fage Greek yogurt and granola), lunch (Amy's) and usually some kind of snack. Today's impulse purchase was Bug Bites. You can't do much better than two little squares of chocolate after your Amy's Palaak Paneer, that's what I was thinking.
I pretty much ignored the part of the package where it said "endangered species Chocolate," because what the hell does that mean? I'm just trying to have a sweet treat, and if it helps out a snow leopard along the way, then everybody wins. As long as it's not actually made of endangered species, it's just dandy with me.
Here's where the "Bug Bites" concept goes awry: Sitting on top of my square of milk chocolate was a picture of several fungus beetles. My tip to the Endangered Species Chocolate Company: Putting a picture of an ugly (cocoa-colored) bug on my chocolate does not make me want to save the bug OR eat the chocolate. It makes me want to kill the bug and not eat chocolate for a long time.
Yes, brilliant advertising campaign. If you get a chance, see if you can find Monty Python's sketch on the policemen checking out the chocolates, like "crunchy frog." It seems funny and ironic, like "no one would ever do that" and then, I read about your experience and thing--oh, geez...
ReplyDeleteThe Creator, if He exists, has "an inordinate fondness for beetles".
ReplyDelete--- JBS Haldane
did you know that they use beetles to make red food coloring?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/bugjuice.htm
This all reminds me of a time when I worked at FOXNews.com and some people in the office decided to do a piece on chocolate-covered bugs. That's the kind of hard-hitting reporting they USED to do, before it became the right-wing mouthpiece it is today. How sad...
ReplyDeleteI guess given these examples I'd rather have a picture of a bug on my food than a bug as my actual food.
Indeed, I believe the bug-eating was for the Sci-Tech section (ahem), which was always on the cutting edge of online reportage (koff, koff).
ReplyDeleteCicadas -- they're not just for breakfast anymore!