Sunday Random

It’s been a long day, so I can only muster a short bit here…

I’ve long understood that the breakfast cereal industry has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the American consumer for decades now. It’s just plain facts that their products — even those that are marketed as “nutritious” and “good for you” — are loaded with chemicals and sugars. The only way you could call them “good for you” and “nutritious” is if you’re a) preying on stupid people who would rather not know the truth, and b) comparing what you make to some bizarre standard, like rat poison or something.

And our wonderful government isn’t much help. They know this, yet give us food pyramids that get it all wrong. And it’s no wonder — they’ve got to keep mono-crop growers happy, right? You start saying that Wheaties or Corn Flakes (for a couple of massively tame examples compared to the sugared-up stuff they’re foisting on us) aren’t good for you, you’ve got to answer to a whole new lobby.

If social media has taught us anything, it should be how easily manipulated and made fools the American public can be.

Now, I say all of this to share some good news. I was in the commissary today, and this is what I saw:

Yeah. $7.13 for a box of Cheerios. Sure, it’s 20 ounces, but still…

So the good news is this: Looks like Mr. Kellogg and General Mills are pricing the American family out of the ability to eat their poison. Personally, I recommend oatmeal. It’s doubled in price over the past couple of years (to somewhere north of $6 here), but at least you can get more than 5 breakfasts out of a box. A lot more, actually. And if you play it right, far better for you. Mix in your own ingredients, and you pretty much know what you’ve got. Compare that with cereal out of the box, where in a lot of cases, after you get past the wheat, corn, and rice, you don’t even know what you’re reading anymore.

Micha wanted to go to the Korean Folk Village up in Yongin today to buy some bean paste. We had a rough morning with a sick dog, so I was up for it just to go somewhere. We pulled into the busiest parking lot I’ve ever seen there at about 3 this afternoon.

The picture here may look somewhat tame, but this is only the main lot right in front of the gate (where I was parked when I took the picture). They originally funneled us past the second and third lots, up a hill on a narrow road, and tried to park us in with a few hundred other cars. When I realized that there were three cars immediately in front of me and the guy was starting a fifth row directly behind, I backed up and got out of there. The way they were parking us, I would have been dependent on several other families leaving the park before I could even consider getting out of there. In other words, we would have been stuck there for the next 5 hours easy. And all just to buy a bottle of bean paste.

So we made our way back through the mess toward the exit, and when we got right in front of the entrance to the park, we see a guy directing traffic. Micha says, “we’re only here to buy bean paste,” to which he responded, “You can pull over right up there and go in and get it.” Yeah. They’ve got an entrance off to the side of the main entrance just to sell their bean paste. Being a traditional folk village, they also make traditional ingredients…and I guess they’re pretty good at it. Good enough for a side entrance.

I’ll not see any of it though. It’s tagged for Okinawa to feed my daughter.