I was just reading this article about products invented by accident, and the very last thing it mentioned was NutraSweet. Apparently, it’s actually called “aspartame”, which sounds an awful lot like: “Ass, part of me”. So that’s why they changed the name to NutraSweet. For clearly, ass, whether part of you or not, doesn’t seem as sweet as it could; at least not to eat. And it’s clearly not as good as sugar. But then again, neither is NutraSweet. Hmm. Perhaps the original name wasn’t so inappropriate after all…
But you know, when you hear the name NutraSweet (I used to spell it "NutriSweet", because that’s what I thought it was.), doesn’t it sound like it’s sweet and nutritious? But it’s not: it’s just another toxic chemical made to punish people who try to avoid eating delicious sugar, because that’s clearly cheating. (It was probably secretly designed by sugar to get revenge against those of us who betray it.) Look, you know you want to eat sugar, so just eat sugar! You know you want it! It’s scrump-dilly-icious! Yummy yum yum!
Oh, yes: yummy. This reminds me of an old Twix ad that used to run on TV when I was a kid. They would have somebody try a Twix bar, and they’d say: “Twix is delicious!” And my sister and I would look at each other with a confused look on our little faces and say: “Candy bars aren’t delicious; they’re yummy!” I suppose adults in advertising agencies never will understand children. (Just how to get them to nag their parents for stuff.)
By the way, if you ever need proof of the dominance of sugar over all the fake sweeteners, ask yourself this: If someone asked you for something you didn’t want to grant them, and they said: “Pretty-please with NutraSweet on top?”, or “Pretty-please with Splenda on top?”, or worse: “Pretty-please with saccharine (or Sweet’N Low) on top?”, would you be persuaded by that? Of course you wouldn’t! That would be my ad for pure cane sugar, and I’ll bet it would be very effective, too. When you put fake stuff into an old saying like “pretty-please with sugar on top”, or “butter-fingers” (“margarine-fingers”?), it just makes your brain reject the idea of the fake stuff and feel like the old staples like sugar and butter are really the natural choices. And when you have that kind of reaction, you should realize it’s because all this fake crap is bad for you, and in the back of your mind, you’ve known it all along. It’s not just that the fake product’s name sounds funny in that context, it’s the revelation that it just doesn’t really work very well at what it’s trying to do, either. After all, it’s called “artificial” because it’s artifice: it’s tricking and deceiving you into thinking it’s similar to something else that you liked in the first place. So why not just have the real thing? In moderation, it really isn’t that much harm.
Here’s that article I was talking about:
