Monday, September 22, 2008

M&Melamine

So here I am sitting in Jakarta, snacking out of a packet of peanut M&M's. I recently discovered them at a shop and longing for tastes of home have been indulging a little bit. When an e-mail from a friend here in Indonesia pops into my in-box with the subject "If you have these at home DON'T eat them!" attached is a list of foods to throw out. All these foods have been tainted by milk products from China where Melamine was added in the processing of the milk in order to add protein to milk that is diluted. Essentially milk producers are cheating. They blame rising fuel prices and tightening margins. As they justify their behavior more and more children in China fall ill, some reports stating as many as 53,000, and many die from eating tainted milk and baby formula. As I pop one more melts in your mouth not in your hand, taste of American goodness into my mouth I read the list and there it is... M&M's.


But noooo, these can't be made in china? I scour the package written in about a dozen different languages, I peel back the Bahasa Indonesian label that has been stuck to the package presumably to meet some sort of national standard and underneath it find the words... "MADE IN CHINA". I remember once buying and American flag for the 4th of July and finding those words on the flag and laughing at the irony. But as the last M&M was melting in my mouth, I wasn't enjoying the irony anymore. Spit, spit, spit!

I already have food stats pretty well plugged into my head as far as calories, protein, fiber, iron, calcium etc... Call me lazy, but I don't want to have to think about my food in more detail than this. I don't want to have to look at the back of the package and guess what all those "other" ingredients are (Asia is notorious for adding MSG to any and everything) or look at where it is made then look up that country's social, environmental and regulatory record. And what about Mars? At what level are they responsible or will they "these were produced by subsidiary X for subsidiary Y" us to death, just as the Chinese dairies justified their actions with fuel prices and profit margins?

Oh forget it! I think I will go eat an apple... grown without pesticides, but sometimes with pests (ie worms), without wax but always dirty, individually wrapped in a little Styrofoam net to prevent bruising (but probably very bad for the birds) and imported from Japan. Japan's apple farmers are suffering from rising fuel prices as well... they have tightening margins... hmmm... I think I will just go eat an apple and not think about it.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

For my sisters...


I just read this online (so it must be true right?)

"Toy giant Mattel estimates that Barbie owners have staged over 10 billion Barbie and Ken weddings."

First of all how they come up with that sort of estimate is beyond me, but really what got me thinking was the fact that my sisters and I, must have contributed to say... at least one billion of those Barbie/Ken weddings... yes those were the days and it helps to have had three sisters, lazy summers, and plenty of visiting female cousins and friends. Yes, our Barbies and Kens had very active social lives. Barbie and Ken had their little tiffs, especially when our brother's (much shorter) Luke Skywalker action figure entered the picture and tried to break Barbie and Ken up... but in the end there was always a Barbie and Ken wedding. What we forgot to act out was the Barbie/Ken Divorce, The Barbie goes to grad school and becomes highly indebted, The Barbie desperately (okay maybe not desperately just yet) searches for a job, The Barbie wanders the globe in search of something?, and the Barbie lives happily everafter with her dog... I suppose getting to the wedding was enough for our fanciful little girl imaginations and now it is up to our adult imaginations to finish the story...hopefully with as much style and blissful happiness as in those lazy summers...

Yes, yes, I promise I will quit these silly tangents and get back to the matters at hand such as, where the heck I am living and what I am doing and all the little quirky things about my life now...like chocolate sprinkles... I was just enjoying this moment down memory lane.