…It tastes like alcohol. Hard, neutrally flavored alcohol, which is what it is, which is why it’s for grownups. Grownups who can appreciate drinking and eating things that are complex, bitter,  salty, and not necessarily sweet. Grownup flavors for grownup palates. The kind of flavors you grow into, slowly, as your taste matures…like wine, or caviar, or coffee…

But flavor your vodka or other spirits like a cupcake, or marshmallows or whipped cream, or chocolate or candy canes or gingerbread…and you have dessert, or treats for children. I like dessert (sometimes), and I like alcohol (most times), and children…(usually) but I don’t want them to all hang out together. I want them to stay in their separate corners, and only pair up where its appropriate. Dessert and children, ok. Alcohol and children, not ok. Alcohol and dessert, ok only when its something time-proven and classic like port and chocolate, or peaches in brandy, or bananas foster…flambe!

But put all three together, and you have the newest Foodiness foolishness to hit the scene; vodka and other spirits flavored like dessert, and not-so-subtly marketed with the goal of bringing the tweens and teens to the bar, by luring them with flavorings and sugar. There they go, all those crackhead sugar-loving kids, following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole where they encounter a fully stocked bar brimming with all those candy-colored and tasty-flavored offerings. And standing on a box behind the bar, there’s Snooki, with her own line of fruity-candy-flavored vodkas, ready to mix it up and party hardy. She knows there’s no way back out of the rabbit hole, so she’s going all the way down. And so there they drink…the oversized toddlers and their elfin leader, sucking down that marshmallow-coconut-blueberry-acai-pomegranate-chocolate-cupcakey booze, or is it booziness? Because in 21st century America, you can have your cake and drink it too…no fork required. 

And it’s not just the kids bellying (literally) up to the bar, its all the rest of sugar-addicted America, happily regressing back to nursing sippy-cups of spiked Hi-C in adulthood, “martinis” made from melted ice cream and coconut rum, antifreeze-blue colored frozen slushy drinks in tall plastic cups made for drinking while stumbling down bourbon street. (For reference see the Kids in the Hall Girl Drink Drunk prescient early 90s skit.)

What happened to a Martini? Vodka and tonic? Scotch and soda? Even a greyhound? Or a Screwdriver? Where’s Don Draper to mix us a bloody mary or pour us a little bourbon over ice as we meet in his office before (!) lunch….

Like Julie Andrews sang, “just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”….but we don’t like to take our medicine, unless its really sweet. So I think now it’s the reverse, just a spoonful of booze helps all the sugar go down….nice and easy, making us into big, fat, drunken toddlers, too drunk and too engorged and too stupid to find our way back out of the rabbit hole, where Don is waiting for us, in his cool tailored suit, with a tumbler of scotch on the coffee table.

So while you are listening to this week’s show about the candification of American food, I am in Utah at a hiking bootcamp spa-ish kind of place, getting some much-needed outdoor time and a lot of exercise. I already get a lot of exercise at home, but this place kind of forces you to really push your limits, and I want to be pushed to my limits.

The food at the spa (it’s not really a spa) is tolerable, but still, Foodiness slips its sticky fingers into everything these days….Especially when it comes to sweetness. We are here because we are interested in health and well-being, right? So why are they using stuff like Splenda and Stevia in our food? Can’t we just eliminate the sweetness factor in the menu for a week? I snuck a look at the recipe binder for the cook, and I’d say 50% of the recipes called for Foodiness additions. From sugar-free marmalade, and diet soda in baked goods, to cooking spray and margarine!!

I know its all well-intentioned, and people do come here to lose weight, but I cant get away from the Foodiness! I don’t need everything I eat to be sweet, but it seems as if we have become a nation of sweetness addicted overgrown children. Do I need to eat Splenda-sweetened fake ice cream after dinner? No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. How ’bout an apple?

The legendary Food Warrior Marion Nestle joins me tonight on Let’s Get Real to talk Food v. Foodiness. She’s one of the people who inspired me to start thinking about this stuff in the first place, so I’m eager to get her thoughts on how to bring REAL FOOD to the Foodiness masses….