Junk Food Heaven PDF

# Junk Food Heaven Some weeks ago I announced to my wife that I was going to the supermarket with her next time she went because the stuff she kept bringing home was not fully in the spirit of American eating. Here we were living in a paradise of junk food – the country that gave the world cheese i...

# Junk Food Heaven Some weeks ago I announced to my wife that I was going to the supermarket with her next time she went because the stuff she kept bringing home was not fully in the spirit of American eating. Here we were living in a paradise of junk food – the country that gave the world cheese in a spray can – and she kept bringing home healthy stuff like fresh broccoli. It was because she was English, of course. She didn’t really understand the possibilities for greasiness that the American diet offers. I longed for bacon bits, cheese in a shade of yellow unknown to nature, and chocolate fillings, sometimes all in the same product. So I accompanied her to the supermarket and while she was off pricing mushrooms I made for the junk food section – which was the rest of the store. Well, it was heaven. There were two hundred types of breakfast cereal. The most immediately interesting was a cereal called Cookie Crisp, which tried to pretend it was a nutritious breakfast but was really just chocolate chip cookies that you put in a bowl and ate with milk. Brilliant. I grabbed* a box and rushed* back to the trolley. “What's that?" my wife asked in the special tone of voice with which she often addresses me in retail establishments*. “Breakfast,” I panted as I rushed past, “and don’t even think about putting any of it back and getting muesli.” It was the breakfast pizza that finally made my wife snap*. She looked at the box and said, “No.” “I beg your pardon, my sweet?” “You are not bringing home something called breakfast pizza. I will let you have” – she reached into the trolley for some samples – “Cookie Crisp and toaster strudel and...” She lifted out a packet she hadn’t noticed before. “What’s this?” I looked over her shoulder. “Microwave pancakes,” I said. “Microwave pancakes,” she repeated, but with less enthusiasm. “Isn’t science wonderful?” “You’re going to eat it all,” she said. “Every bit of everything that you don’t put back on the shelves now. You do understand that?” “Of course,” I said in my sincerest voice. And do you know she actually made me eat it. I spent weeks working my way through a symphony of junk food, and it was awful. Every bit of it. Extract from _Notes from a Big Country_ by Bill Bryson