NOTE: Sadly, Mad-Dog was killed in a freak accident while he was trying (yet again) to create an Anna Nicole Smith clone. This, then, is the last of Mad-Dog’s columns.
Mad-Dog:
Matt
Does sperm cause tooth decay?
Why do cats circle around before they lie down?
How do they cram all that graham?
What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
Puerdo ir al bano?
Only if it goes in your mouth.
It’s an instinct left from when they used to sleep in fields of tall grass.
They use a Graham Crammer Hammer.
Anything that does not involve getting tooth decay from sperm.
Si.
Dear Dog:
What is your opinion of television? Do you agree that TV robs its viewers of their natural creativity and fills their minds with the ideas and adventures of others? Thus creating a mass of non-creative couch potatoes wandering the streets of our nation.
Lee D. Artie
Unh... whatever... can’t write...watching Gilligan’s Island...
Mad-Dog, ya lousy bastard,
Last week I was on line with my tin cup and the lousy prison screws watching over me when someone put a Snackwells treat on my tray. I nearly killed the bastard, but stopped beating him about the head when he told me it was fat-free. How can my Snackwells Chocolate Truffle Cakes be fat free? On the back of the box it says the cakes contain a “rich, chocolatey filling”. What’s in the chocolatey filling if not chocolate and where did all my fat go?
Yours in confinement, Chris, the baddest pooch in the pound.
p.s. what type of cookie would you recommend for a last meal?
Chris,
I had no idea that you folks doin’ time for the man were so desperately concerned with your waistlines. Perhaps some extra time on the chain-gang will help to get you looking your shower-room best.
I’ll be honest with you here, buddy-boy. I was looking forward to telling you that they fill those fat-free cookie type things with so many chemicals that you’d be better off sucking on one of those big mints found in urinals. I am sorely disappointed to report that to make something fat-free; all you have to do is make it without fat. Snackwells, for example, use egg whites as opposed to whole eggs, and skim milk as opposed to gasoline. Yes, yes that was a tiny joke. They use skim milk as opposed to shaving cream. This all sounds simple enough until you realize that fat is very important in baking. It helps to smooth things out, give the food a texture, and add inches to your delicate little waistline, making you worth less money on the prison-sex bartering scale.
In absence of fat, the fine folks at Nabisco have introduced a stunning array of ingredients that you will probably not find in your pantry. In order to have all the ingredients (I will not print them - there are 20 + ingredients in these little snack treats) blend properly, they have added Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Monoglycerides. It’s a good name for a band and it’s also an emulsifier - something that keeps ingredients from separating.
How ‘bout that “rich chocolatey filling”? You’re right - there is no chocolate in it. There is, however, cocoa, which can be processed in such a way that it contains very little fat. The government’s definition of fat-free, by the way is “a product containing less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving.” So there is some fat even in these wondrous little snack-treats. To give the filling that “creamy, rich texture” (a Nabisco employee refused to use the word “gooey” when I spoke to him on the phone), necessitates the addition of cellulose gum and gel. This is a gooey (or creamy, rich - depending on who signs your paychecks...) indigestible carbohydrate polymer derived from the hulls of plants and used as a bulking agent and to reduce the caloric content in foods (more non-digestible bulk = fewer calories...).
I feel compelled to tell you that the ingredients inventory of these fat-free (and so allegedly healthy) goodies lists: High fructose corn syrup (first on the list), sugar, dextrose, and corn syrup as among the components of this healthy treat. Four types of sugar in one product just doesn’t equate to rapid weight loss. This is a problem with many fat-free foods. There is so little flavor that it necessitates the addition of lots of extra sugar.
As for where your fat went, I daren’t think, Chris.
For a last meal I would recommend one of my grandmother’s super-healthy, fat-free, bran, raisin, carrot, dill cookies. If that doesn’t do you in, nothing will.
Back to February/March '98 issue
