Saturday, August 19, 2006

Kellogg's, Yakult and Coprophobia

Much as I admire the spirit of American capitalism, I have always been wary of letting the great Kellogg company get its hands on my intestines. Yet that is what is wants to do with all its fibre-rich cereals. Lately, however, the yoghurt companies with products like Yakult have been attempting to wrest our bowels from its grip with claims about their "probiotic" products which are said to fill our guts with "friendly" bacteria. These claims about yoghurt date back to the time when the Russian Nobel prizewinner Elie Metchnikoff convinced himself that certain Bulgarian peasants lived to a great age because of their consumption of yoghurt. In fact, the longevity of the peasants was a myth. Metchnikoff, however, was convinced that yoghurt was good for "arresting putrefractions and pernicious fermentations." He was, in short, anti-shit. The current claims for probiotic yoghurt seem to be foundering because the acidity of the stomach kills those amiable bacteria. This allows Kellogg's and the other cereal companies to strike back with "prebiotic" food that makes the intestine a more congenial place for nice bugs to live. Again, this seems to me to be anti-shit in that it claims to make our defecations somehow more pleasant. In fact, almost all food fads are simply coprophobic fantasies. Even those calorie restrictionists who try to live longer by eating less are, I suspect, in the business of shit-avoidance. There is one great, shining truth of life which we all acknowledge and yet, in our dietary fantasies, strive to deny. Shit happens.

9 comments:

  1. "Shit Happens" would be a good name for All Bran if they ever rebranded.

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  2. Nice one, Charlotte!
    I feel I should mention here the fearless pioneering work of Dr (tho there's some dispute about that bit) Gillian McKeith. Every week in her jaw-dropping show You Are What You Eat, she examines her subjects' 'poo' - as she and all concerned nauseatingly call it - with epicurean relish barely disguised as scientific curiosity. This lone heroine, forever voyaging through strange seas of thought alone, clearly WANTS shit to happen - just higher quality shit. No denial in her world, that's for sure...
    N

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  3. How bout a new political party of integrity called the Probiotic Party, with a ready-made slogan of Anti-Shit?

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  4. And where, pray, are all the great shitting scenes in literature? Get beyond Bloom on the lav with a short story, and the occasional coded fart joke in Shakespeare, and you're left with...what, Irving Welsh?

    Dead White Males. Coprophobist oppressors, too.

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  5. N, there is a fine line to be drawn between oppressive avoidance and excessive affirmation. I agree that the ghastly McKeith crashes down on the side of affirmation. But, then again, Jack has a point, does he not? I do seem to remember something Martin Amis wrote about his own products - "black as night and sank like a stone". But, on the whole, coprophobia has reigned in letters as elsewhere.

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  6. For what it's worth, I think there's a 'structurally perfect stool' somewhere in Nabokov (Ada probably) - and Updike of course does not ignore this area of life, but mercifully he doesn't go on about it.
    H.de Lettres

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  7. And, of course, All Bran is advertised by William SHATner.

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  8. fascinating. yakultis a lacto-bacillus, as we know the japanese (where yakult comes from) aren't big dairy consumersthe TV ad refers to the intestine as a 24 foot eco-system,which makes a cesspit or compost heap an eco- system
    it's intersting to note thatprobiotic ads are aimed mostly at women.

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  9. Fascinating. Yakult is a lacto-bacillus. As we know the japanese (where yakult comes from) aren't big dairy consumers The TV ad refers to the intestine as a 24 foot eco-system,which makes a cesspit or compost heap an eco- system.
    it's intersting to note that probiotic ads are aimed mostly at women.

    ReplyDelete