Smile!

When Paul and I were last at the grocery store, we bought these strange and rather creepy potato treats:

They’re McCain Smiles (for which I can only find a Norwegian Web page), mashed potato treats formed into little visages, blissfully unaware of the fate to which they are doomed. The only way that these snacks could be more disturbing would be if they were British smiles.

I used to kid my former girlfriend, a vegetarian, that what made meat taste so good was the animal’s soul. I also said that the wonderful feeling that comes after eating flesh was in fact our stomach nerves’ interpretation of the anguished cries of an animal’s soul being slowly digested. (Surprisingly, that is not the reason she broke up with me.) If having a soul implies delicious taste, then Smiles have no more soul than the ordinary french fry (or chip, to my orthodontically-challenged British readers).

I suppose it gives vegetarians a chance to answer “yes” to Animal Alliance’s question: “Does your food have a face?”