It’s important, health nuts and dieticians will tell you, to eat simpler. Try to eat locally sourced food, goes the advice, and choose foods that are minimally processed. The fewer the ingredients, the better, experts will tell you, so check the list of ingredients on every box or bag or frozen package of food you buy.
That’s tiresome and bossy advice, I know, and it always seems to end up with someone suggesting that the key to overall health is crouching down every day and eating the front lawn, bugs and all. That’s the extreme end of all of this nutritional advice, I admit, but then we live in extreme times. You know how it goes: First they offer some sensible advice about a healthy diet, and before you know it, they’re grinding up crickets into some kind of burger and telling you to eat it and like it.
This is what happened with all of those wonderful lightbulbs we used to have — the ones that got red-hot and glowed a flattering pink-orange color — and now we have to live under the chilly grey and sickly pall of those awful LED lights that last forever. I’d prefer to take a few years off the life of the planet to have my warm glow back, and I’m unapologetic about my selfish preference to subject future generations to an arid, waterless future if we can keep using toilets that, you know, really flush.
We all have that one annoying friend — some of us, inexplicably, have more than one — who can rattle off the facts and figures that describe our personal and planetary decline. The complicated, overchemicaled food we eat is killing us. Our wanton use of Earth’s resources will heat up the planet and burn us up. Late-stage capitalism is eliminating Indigenous people and their ancient wisdom from our world. Again: You know how it goes.
The best way out of these irritating discussions, I have recently discovered, is to listen to it all, take a long and thoughtful pause, and then ask, “Let me ask you this: Have you ever really considered the Frito? I mean, really considered it?” And then, when they’re momentarily stunned by this unexpected right hook, I hit ‘em with some knowledge.
I start this way: Eating a bag (or two, or seven) of Fritos is nothing less than a celebration of the Indigenous foodways of the greater American (North, Central, and South) peoples and cultures. Corn, as everyone knows, was carried back to the European settler-colonialists by the greatest settler-colonialist of them all, Christopher Columbus. With every delicious crunch, we reclaim the heritage of our continental forebears and Mother Corn, Madre de Mais.
OK, I made that last part up. But I didn’t make this up: The three ingredients in a bag of original flavor Fritos corn chips are: corn, corn or canola oil, and salt.
That’s it. Just those three things. Not bad, right? If you’re following the check-the-ingredients rule, Fritos come off as pretty healthy.
Compare, for example, the ingredients of a popular frozen vegan “hamburger,” which I have cut and pasted here for convenience: “Ingredients: Water, carrots, onions, soy protein concentrate, mushrooms, water chestnuts, soy flour, wheat gluten, vegetable oil (corn, canola and/or sunflower), green bell peppers, soy protein isolate, cooked brown rice (water, brown rice), whole grain oats, onion powder, red bell peppers, cornstarch. Contains 2% or less of sugar, black olives, salt, methylcellulose, konjac flour, soy sauce (fermented soybeans, salt), spices, garlic powder, potassium salt, xanthan gum, jalapeno pepper.”
I choose the more healthful Frito, if you don’t mind. I care about my health and the ancient cultures of the Indigenous peoples of the Earth, for one thing, and for another, I have no idea what konjac flour is, but I’d be surprised if the konjac was sustainably farmed. For yourself, for our ancestors, for the planet, the Frito is the answer. It’s more than a snack. It’s activism.
Full disclosure: I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee, shareholder, bondholder, or financial partner of the Frito-Lay corporation. I’m not making a general case about the company as a whole. My simple point is that a bag of Fritos — specifically the original flavor; I’m not talking about the other stuff — is the answer to everything those annoying eat-this-not-that friends worry about, and when you tell them that, it totally ruins their day. And that’s a delicious snack too.
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Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
