jsolof writes at: [blogs.sun.com]

My wife and I have breakfast almost every morning at Panera Bread. We order the same thing every time: chocolate chip muffie (muffin top) and a medium iced tea for her, a nine grain bagel with peanut butter and a medium coffee for me.

I get the nine grain bagel, not because I particularly like roughage, but because it’s (ostensibly) better for me than some of their other varieties. And if you’ve ever had some of their other varieties, you’ll understand why.

The problem is… it tastes bad. It goes beyond not tasting like anything: it’s actually bad. Scotch lovers will be familiar with the term “mouth feel”. […] Then you take a bite, and — even slathered in peanut butter — you taste… something. Something bad. Something like wallboard, shredded into little tiny pieces, glued together (with lots of air mixed in) and made up to look like a bagel.

…and since the blogs.sun.com comment mechanism ate my comment, I’ll make a small note here, that this sounds too much like the wonderful Saki short-story “Filboid Studge” to be true.

Go read it. The story is worthwhile and only a couple of pages long. Try [www.eastoftheweb.com]

Friends from Indiana recently visited me in the UK and commented how bizzare it was not to see “Lo-Carb Supermarkets” or somesuch; I’d never encountered the concept before and found it mildly horrific, that they were feeling licentiously pleasured by eating pasta without having some menu-writer’s disclaimer wagging a moral finger at them.

The UK is supposed to be the nation in Europe, most noted for not taking food seriously[1] – how ironic it would be if, as we improve, America completely forgets how to enjoy food.

[1] Personally I suspect this honour may be shared with the Dutch, but don’t tell them that I said so.