Sus Domesticus

When my nephew was visiting last week he left evidence of a midnight snack run in the bathroom -- the wrapper to a chocolate All American Creme Pie.

I've eaten hundreds of these over my lifetime, although these days I really don't do that any more...but I did as a kid. The difference between 1979 and 2010, however, is that these pies today are cheap -- dirt cheap -- can be found in every gas station and corner store from Seattle to Miami, and aren't made with sugar and butter but with HFCS and soybean oils.

Growing up we had only Hostess Fruit Pies. Remember those? They were awesome! -- but I seem to remember they weren't nearly as accessible as pies are today. I ate my share, I'll tell you that right now...but I don't remember either me or too many other people around me looking like this, though:

Is this the new normal here in our greatest nation on earth? Men who look like they've swallowed a beach ball?

And compare this belly to the belly on the 9-year old girl on the homepage of Cutiepie.com, makers of said pies. She's thin as a rail. Think she could or would eat those two pies she's holding up? If she did, she'd get nine hundred forty calories, well over her entire daily allotment of saturated fat and enough corn syrup to stun a cape buffalo. She'll be diabetic by age thirty if she keeps this up -- yet according to the manufacturer they're only made with real fruit and only the freshest ingredients!

Tell me. How fresh do you think the sodium stearoyl lactylate is in these pies. And tell me. What the fuck is stearoyl lactylate, huh? Is it something you have in your cupboard? Damn -- even the blogger spell check gets all buggered up with stearoyl and lactylate. They aren't foods. They hardly qualify as words. Yet we're slamming them down and ending up with bellies like the photo above.

We are becoming nothing more than a new breed of habitual upright bipedal Sus Domesticus. And this is why I'm supposed to subscribe to a single payer health care system?