Food In Real Life

Special K Italian Tomato & Herb Crackers

Looks: Except for having fewer flecks of what I presume is tomato and less texture, they’re identical to the crackers on the box. (I’m holding the one cracker up to show that the larger cracker on the box is just closer to the camera; the package doesn’t contain a large “lord of the crackers” cracker or anything.) 4.5 out of 5

Taste: It tastes like a generic cracker, with a little bit of tomato-y aftertaste. Nothing special at all, and the crackers I tried weren’t even very crisp, which I thought was the whole point of crackers. Since they weren’t offensive-tasting, they don’t score too low, but they were so forgettable that I would never have reason to buy them again. 2.5 out of 5

This Week in Comments

I’d like to take some time each week to recognize the top comments from the previous week that added value to the conversation (or ones that just made me laugh):

In the discussion about photographing food, Razor512 chipped in quite a bit of helpful information:

“if you have a dslr, use the exposure bracketing

lower the exposure all the way (in many cases it removed the over exposed areas, then do 1 normal image and then do some tone mapping or just photoshop out the highlights by replacing those parts with the under exposed image)

another solution when taking a image of a very shiny object and you want to preserve detail, use a low powered indirect light, then with the camera do a 3 second exposure (or longer depending on the camera, also use the lowest ISO possible)” … (comment continues here)

An anonymous user voiced their concern for my health:

“Read you every day, but I worry about your health. Nothing but highly processed foods in your diet? Look and taste is a good start, but I’d also like to see more analysis of the nutrition of these ‘foods’. If it looks good because of colored dyes, or if it tastes good because of lab flavors, then I think you have become an unpaid volunteer for the future of ‘soylent’ products. You should at least make some money from your experiment because you’ll probably need it for medical expenses in the near future. I’ve been tempted by the pictures on the box and the amazingly low prices, but not very often have I been able to eat more than a mouthful before spitting it out and dumping the rest.” (context)

And one more anonymous user added this very important tid-bit about Taco Bell’s new Blackjack Taco:

“It also makes your poop dark green!” (context)

Thanks for all of your contributions; I hope to do this every week. Did anyone see a favorite comment that I left out?

Wendy’s Junior Frosty (Chocolate)

Looks: Have you ever wanted to feel like a giant but didn’t want to undergo painful leg-lengthening surgery? Just pick up a Jr. Frosty from Wendy’s! This thing is seriously small: about 3 inches from top top bottom – that’s half the length of a dollar bill.

I suppose it should be small, since it’s “Junior,” but just holding it in my hand made me feel enormous. (As for the actual food contents, it’s pretty close to advertised, albeit a little more melted, but it had undergone a 10-minute car ride before I could take pictures of it.) 4.5 out of 5

Taste: It was pretty close to the “shakes” I used to make as a kid: fill a cup with vanilla ice cream, add an unseemly amount of chocolate syrup, and then stir until it’s mixed and the ice cream has melted enough to be shake-consistency. (This is not a bad comparison; I loved those shakes.) There’s not much else to say, except that I ate it so fast I got brain-freeze. So, don’t do that. 4 out of 5

Multigrain Wheat Thins

Looks: Somewhat oranger than depicted, and not quite as textured. 4 out of 5

Taste: Like a really salty Wheat Thin. I couldn’t eat more than a few at once due to the overwhelming amount of salt on them – almost inedible. 1.5 out of 5