Time to add some noise to the signal and rant about just a little annoyance.

Thousand Island. Kraft Thousand Island, in particular. First, a diversion.

Sometime when I was in college, I read an article that ranked your fanciness in society according to the dressing you put on your salad. Oil and vinegar was at the top. Thousand Island was at the proletariat bottom. I was a Thousand Island man my whole life. Up to that point. In a silly attempt to fancify my life, I moved up the dressing ladder. I couldn't stand oil and vinegar (ick!) but could make it as far as Italian dressing.

And there I stayed. For many, many years. Until recently, when I rediscovered Thousand Island, buying the fancy cooled jar of some top-notch brand when it was on sale. Mmmm! Good stuff. And then Elisa whipped some up from scratch. Double mmmm! I was indulging in the tangy-goodness of Thousand Island, my social standing be damned.

Then recently Elisa did a quick good deed, picking up a bottle of Thousand Island for me. I loaded up a spinach salad and dived in. Ick. Did the Thousand Island go bad? It didn't taste like any Thousand I had ever had in my whole life, which was strange, because it was Kraft brand. You'd figure if anyone could nail the taste buds of the proletariat, it would be Kraft.

I gave it a second try a couple nights later. Ick. Definitely ick. Sweet, sweet ick. So I opened the fridge and squatted down to read the ingredient list on the back of the bottle: tomato puree was #1 (aka, ketchup) and #2 was high fructose corn syrup.

Dun-dun-duuuuuuun!

Why in the world does Thousand Island need a massive dosing of sweetening, let alone the public enemy #2 high fructose corn syrup? I'm very fed up that the America diet over the past two decades has become more and more dosed with sweetening. Enough with making everything sweet! Please.

So now when I shop and I'm not shopping on the edge perimeters of the grocery store (edge items that tend to be safer and better for you) I'm having to squint at the back of every item and ensure that the dietary boogey men of MSG and HFCS are not present.

Makes a guy want to make his own Thousand Island.