Fwd: Mark Morford: You Now Hate Chocolate Cake

[Guest guest]

===== Mark Morford's Notes & Errata =====

SFGate.com - Friday, August 12, 2005

 

 

 

 

You Now Hate Chocolate Cake

Implant fake food memories, lose weight! Great for a willpower-free nation. Mmm,

lethal!

By Mark Morford

I remember, as a kid, not having much of a problem with the consumption of

spinach.

I remember loving cucumbers and despising tomatoes and having a strange affinity

for Brussels sprouts, and I recall mainlining grape Kool-Aid and sprinkling

handfuls of Nestlé chocolate chips onto heaping tablespoonfuls of Adams peanut

butter, and I slathered so much cinnamon sugar on so much buttered toast I could

down a whole loaf in 15 minutes without breathing.

I remember enjoying boxfuls of mesmerizingly neon-orange Kraft Mac 'N Cheese

with little sliced-up hot dogs like the stuff was manna from the gods and I was

a mere slave to the blessing, and I was all over Oscar Mayer bologna and iceberg

lettuce and stacks of frozen Totino's pizzas, 99 cents apiece from Safeway, not

to mention canned chili and SpaghettiOs and that disquieting Chef Boyardee

canned ravioli with its brown pasty meat-like ConAgra dog-food filling, and oh

my God it was all glorious and toxic and good.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe I'm just making this all up. Maybe I have no

idea what the hell I actually remember because maybe my brain has been scrambled

and my memories replaced and my desperate childhood fondness for my

grandmother's Swedish meatballs is actually an illusion implanted by studious

and somber psychologists who should right now be wondering whatever happened to

their dreams of opening a flower shop and falling in love.

 

Maybe I was, in other words, the subject of experiments like those just

completed by a team of psychologists from UC Irvine, whereby researchers figured

out ways to subtly manipulate the minds of happily naive subjects so as to

actually implant -- wait for it -- positive or negative food associations. False

memories. Bogus likings. A distaste for strawberry ice cream and a deep love of

asparagus. And so forth.

 

This is true. This just happened. And the reason they did it? Get this -- they

did it, ostensibly, to help people diet. Right.

 

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/08/12/notes081205.DTL\

& nl=fix)

 

 

To or , please click here and remove one article of

clothing. Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and

Friday on SFGate, and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. Mark's column

also has an RSS feed, and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny

photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and

give him gifts.

 

As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SFGate

Culture Blog.

 

All contents © 2005 SF Gate

~ nil desperandum

 

 

 

 

" When the power of love becomes stronger than the love of power, we will have

peace. "

Jimi Hendrix