How Not to Snack

by Joseph Skinner Web Designer

snacks We are told not to do it all the time. By our parents, first of all. And by our teachers – "Are you eating in the classroom!? Haven't your parents taught you not to snack?" – and after that, as if we needed reminding, by pretty much everybody in the health service as well. Doctors gently prod us with comments about giving our bodies a proper routine and nutrients. Dentists tell us that if we don't stop, all our teeth will fall out before we reach the age of twenty (then thirty, and so forth until our teeth do actually fall out). And yet, for goodness sake, we just will not stop snacking.

Well, if we have been told when not to snack—namely, all the time—we you gonna eat that ? have been given far less instruction on how not to snack. Of course, as we well know, everything that is not a raw carrot or a piece of celery is deemed unhealthy by the 'powers that be'. But this blanket condemnation of all of life's wee pleasures has had the accidental effect of cancelling itself out: if we're told we can't have any of the bad things, we say to ourselves rebelliously, we might as well go ahead and have all of them.

But surely some snacks are worse than others?

doughnuts Well, they certainly are. In fact, rather counter-intuitively, some companies have actually taken to advertising snacks for being just that – truly awful. It sounds bizarre, but it is true. One eco-friendly products website advertised lollipops recently with the unique selling point of having a dead spider or other insect buried within the see-through sweet. One wonders what sort of market they are appealing to, but they certainly seem to have hit upon an idea that has got a major gifts website to stock the wretched things. One can imagine the poor cleaning company employs absolutely balking at the notion of accidentally leaving a dead insect lying about… but apparently the rules change if you are trying to find an innovative way of marketing snacks. It's a strange world we live in.

Other candidates for 'world's truly worst snack' can be found in the baby and spaghetti Chinese street stalls both in China and, more and more, in small Chinatowns around the world. Perhaps they taste delicious (I have to confess that I have not yet plucked up the courage and steely nerves necessary to try any of the following) but would you really be tempted to try deep fried ants on sticks, crispy battered beetles or similar concoctions? Admittedly I had thought I was culturally adventurous, but this is too much adventure for me.

I will be sticking to cheese and onion crisps, Dutch liquorice (this is about the extent of my culinary explorative streak) and the odd doughnut. Whatever the doctor says about apples.