Virtual Food

Have you ever looked at the ingredients on a diet snack product?  Most people have at one time or another, and it's pretty scary.  Deciphering some of the more esoteric items seems to require a degree in organic chemistry.

The ingredient list for one of the major soft drinks reads as follows:

Now consider for a moment:  what part of this beverage is in any way foodlike?  Even the water is contaminated with carbon dioxide to produce what is in reality carbonic acid.  There isn't anything here that will actually feed the body.

We were examining the ingredient list for a popular snack pudding a while ago when we realized that it wasn't actually food at all.  It was really a form of entertainment.  We weren't eating it because it was going to nourish us, we were eating it because we were bored and wanted something to entertain us for a moment.  Isn't that strange?

The November 15, 1998 issue of Parade magazine uses the term "eatertainment" (in quotes, but without reference) to describe the Rainforest Cafe and other unnamed similar restaurants.  For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, the Rainforest Cafe is decorated to look like the interior of a rainforest, complete with mechanical animals and simulated thunderstorms.  The food is decent, if overpriced, but the real draw is the entertainment value of the experience.  Eatertainment.

Consider the artificial sweeteners we swill with such abandon.  Scientists spend years finding molecules that interact with our taste buds to produce sensations we recognize as "sweet."  Yet these same molecules are not food, but the chemical equivalent of an electronic wire into some arcane portion of the brain.  In a similar way the new fat substitute looks like fat, acts like fat, and tastes like fat but is not digestible (so you don't get fat).

How is this not an extension of the mediasphere out of the electromagnetic spectrum onto our dinner table?  How is this not virtual food?