So I'm eating a donut at work (and feeling quite guilty about it) and I happen upon the list of ingredients. Reading down the list I come across the more obvious donut components... flour, water, yeast, etc. Then on to the more complicated phonetics... sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, etc. Then I see agar. What the fuck is agar? And why does that pique my interest more than those ingredients that require careful pronunciation?
On to wikipedia! Apparently agar is part of the donut glaze... a gelatin added for thicker texture. Not so scary. At least it's a naturally derived substance. Somehow that quells my fears.
This whole experience reminds me of my dad. If he sees guar gum on an ingredient list (we, as a family, pronounce it as a two-syllable word with stress on the first syllable), he gets the heebie-jeebies. I felt the same with the knowledge of the mysterious agar in my mouth! Yeah, guar gum sounds scary, right? Do not fear the guar gum! It's primarily the ground endosperm of guar beans, used a thickening agent (with 8 times the water thickening potency of cornstarch!) Mmmm... endosperm. Again, a naturally derived substance. From a bean!
I think we, as a packaged-food society, generally accept the more verbally complex ingredients as a necessary evil of our grab-and-go diet. "Yeah, yeah, there are preservatives and artificial chemicals in what I'm eating." They're easily overlooked and ignored... the phonetics of the word alone allow us to catalog the item as an "unknowable" thing and move on with our daily activities. But agar. Agar and guar gum gave me pause. These were tangible words, therefore tangible ideas. Small enough for suspicion. And, ironically, both derived from plant sources and used as thickening agents.
Maybe next time I'll look up sodium stearoyl lactylate.
And here's my haiku:
Quickening heart beat,
a trickle of sweat... Wiki-
pedia saved me!
Side note: Is the use of a hyphen valid in haiku timing? Thoughts?
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1 comment:
Guar gum is yucky.
Thickening is sickening.
Never asked for it.
Your Haiku is strange.
It gives me pause, thought and pain.
Just a dad thinking.
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