Enter the Bitegeist
The pinhole through which you see your world is but one of many pinholes in a Chex piece.
Chex and Balances
I guess I just don’t get Chex Mix.
For as long as I can remember, people have fallen over themselves for the stuff, and I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around it. As a 2nd grader, I was sitting in Mrs. Kohutek’s class, adorned with all the frog décor that Garden Ridge had to offer, as all my classmates flocked to the bowl of Chex Mix in an oversized bowl at our Christmas party. Not the sugar cookies with puffy red and green icing. Not the candy canes. Not the marshmallow snowmen. Chex Mix. Homemade Chex Mix, with red and green M&M’s, sure, but Chex Mix all the same.
What would otherwise be – and indeed, consistently is – considered a lackluster breakfast cereal on its own, Chex has found more sure footing as a snack ingredient. Eat Chex for breakfast? You’re a weirdo. But mix it with a savory seasoning and toss in a few other crunchy, bready cracker variants, and you’re considered a weirdo not to indulge. But Chex Mix has become so ubiquitous as a party food staple that no one seems to take note of how offbeat it really is; not dissimilar to the chasm which lies between a bowl of Rice Krispies and a Rice Krispies Treat. The idea that Chex is reviled in one form but praised in another which is so far removed from its origins is nothing short of remarkable. For me, it raises questions of food’s nomadic potential, how it’s able to adapt to different contexts and find belonging in possibly endless flavor palates.
But this isn’t an exploration of the “how” of Chex Mix. It’s an exploration of “why,” a question that, much like Chex Mix itself, sprouts an endless number of possible variations and tangents.
Some time ago, @indigogloves tweeted the following:
The floodgates were hauled open. The deluge of comments poured forth, each reply and quote tweet serving as an ocean unto themselves, spawning their own currents and swells of debate in people’s respective seas of influence. The thread is still up. You can still witness the carnage yourself.
In reading through people’s responses, it became clear that Chex Mix’s appeal is primarily tactile, a factor I uniformly refer to as The Cronch. Given that the seasoning coats every element of the mix, flavor is not so often scrutinized as texture, mouth feel, sensation. And this is the crux of my own ire with Chex Mix. For claiming to be a mix, it only gives the illusion of variety. There is no variety here. It is all bread. It is six different kinds of bread. I get that it’s packaged in roughly 4 different textures, but after a few chews, it’s all accumulated into a singular, gummy mass in the corners of my mouth that I’ll be trying to scrub clean with my tongue until bedtime.
And that’s the harsh reality that settled strangely on me when I went to bed that night: as much as I enjoyed the debates, as happy as I was to set up my tent in the anti-square-pretzel camp, I knew I just didn’t care as much as someone who loves Chex Mix. Nothing to lose sleep over, perhaps, but we will return to this idea later.
Among the many tangents, rants, and pleas that sprung from the Chex Mix twitter debate came a hypothetical not uncommon to this kind of forum: Whichever piece you excised from Chex Mix, what would you choose to replace it?
The conversation fundamentally shifts from problem identification to problem solving. You can say the rye chip sucks all you want, but what is a more favorable alternative? The question is fascinating, daunting, and presumptuous.
1) It invites the responder to reassess their initial response. You might have said the rye chip disrupts the harmony of how crunchy the mix is. But now you’ve set parameters for a replacement: it must be less crunchy than a rye chip, but not much less crunchy than a mini breadstick. That narrows your options significantly, so you may need to reevaluate if Cronch was really the site of the problem.
2) It assumes a zero-sum economy. You can’t take away without giving in return. A vacuum cannot be left. It also assumes that some significant factor of what exists is already optimized. This opens up a world of conundrums that we’ll also explore in a moment.
3) It positions each individual as an authority in the matter at hand. By having an opinion, you are qualified to formulate and execute change. This is a prospect as dangerous as it is empowering.
From an early age, children are asked questions of problem solving like this. Or, perhaps more often, it’s packaged as a demand. “You can’t complain unless you can come up with a better idea.” “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” “If you don’t like it, come up with something better yourself.” It faces you with a conundrum that will either serve as a linchpin for liberation and a new way forward, or as a latchkey for conformity and imprisonment to the present status quo.
It may sound like we’re not talking about Chex Mix anymore, and we’re not really, but I’m still not quite done with it yet. Because when asked “What should be kicked out of Chex Mix, and what would you replace it with?” chances are you’ve got an answer. Especially if your alternative is to concede that it’s a perfect snack that can’t possibly be improved on.
But I think that very impulse reveals what item three above touches on: that everyone’s individualism leads us to believe that we can improve on any formula, product, schema, or anything else that’s presented to us. This phenomenon is further complexified by the fact that Chex Mix appeals to many because, unlike other snacks such as Lay’s, Cheez-Its, Pringles, etc., it can be replicated and tweaked without special knowledge or skill. In other words, it’s hard to reproduce a Cheez-It, but it’s easy to reproduce Chex Mix and add your own spin to it. Furthermore, it’s applauded, awarded.
When you boil it down, though, it’s still rooted in American individualism. The bravado and self-assurance which lets you – like it let me – fearlessly charge into a low-stakes debate about Chex Mix is the same bravado which calls you out of your lane and into spaces where you mistake having thoughts for having expertise, having opinions with having authority. Fine when we’re talking about rye chips. Disastrous when we’re talking about… just about anything else.
Worse yet, that boisterous individualism keeps us from recognizing the flaws in the zero-sum economy I mentioned. We become so certain we can rise to the challenge on the terms of how things presently are that we’re distracted from questioning why the framework must remain as it is. In other words, we’re so busy arguing for what piece should be booted and what should replace it that we don’t question whether the seasoning is as good as it could be, or whether 5 pieces would be better than 6, or 7, or so on. Asking those questions could help create a Chex Mix more loved by everyone. But instead, our individualism, bolstered by a sense of exceptionalism, spends time arguing for our version, our way. It keeps us from imagining another way.
The challenge of “if you don’t like it, make something better,” always comes with hidden conditions. People can admit there are problems within law enforcement, but don’t want to reallocate funding. People can admit there’s historical basis for the disenfranchisement of BIPOC, but don’t want to confront systemic racism. People can admit we’ve harmed the environment, but don’t want to invest in sustainable solutions. It’s all out of bounds, bumping against the implied guardrails of the challenge.
Because the challenge isn’t a challenge at all. It’s an appeal to individualism, and simultaneously, a feint away from collective care and identity.
So no, it wasn’t Chex Mix that left a pit in my stomach that night. I think it was a distant comprehension of what empathy demands; or, more accurately, what it offers, what it looks like. Because as much as that Chex Mix debate was so precisely up my alley, it confronted me with the mystery of knowing and understanding something, but still not experiencing it to the degree of other people. To borrow language from my evangelical adolescence, I know Chex Mix in my head, but have no place for it in my heart. For me, I fully comprehend the appeal of Chex Mix for other people. And yet, it just does nothing for me. I might even argue that it is, indeed, a perfect snack. And yet I don’t feel connected to it. It is only information for me to comprehend, not an experienced reality for me to connect with.
Does this make it less beautiful? Less sincere? It certainly makes it more frustrating for me. Is beauty that’s understood but not perceived any less beautiful? Or is it a testament to the subjectivity of our own experience?
Perhaps that’s all that empathy is: the peaceful resignation to know that your experience may not be my experience, and yet that doesn’t make connection between us impossible. On the contrary, it’s a call to be constantly curious and others-minded. It’s an embrace of the limitations of the individual toward the flourishing of the communal.
I still don’t get Chex Mix. But I hear you do. And together we can make a better Mix.
Big Mac Meal from McDonald’s
What was the last literary classic that you read? Was it Austen? Dickens? Maybe a more contemporary work like One Hundred Years of Solitude or Beloved? Maybe you were feeling especially diverse and took on something like Maus or Persepolis. Or, as is more frequently the case, maybe you haven’t read any so-called classics in quite some time, potentially not since it was assigned to you your senior year of high school or undergrad. Still, the western literary canon stands as some lofty standard of being “cultured” or “varied” in your reading and sustains the myth that “classic” is a valid descriptor of genre. It’s not a genre. In fact, it erases genre, glosses over the kind of critical thinking and engagement with particular contexts that supposedly won these titles their merit in the first place; when we know something’s a classic, we lose the need to know what it’s actually about to the point where if you ask someone to outline plot points, they likely can’t. This culminates in a twofold inaccessibility: classics become a cloud of guilt and gatekeeping that makes people feel bad for not having read them and casts doubt on their taste until they do, and then a resignation to never engage with the material at all.
Enter the Big Mac.
It may seem absurd to review a Big Mac in the Year of our McLord 2021 but consider for a moment why that is. Perhaps because, well, it’s a Big Mac, potentially the most famous hamburger (cheeseburger if we’re being technical) of all time. Everyone knows the Big Mac. Everyone’s had a Big Mac. Right?
I’d wager more people, at least in America, have had a Big Mac than haven’t. But much like classic novels, I’d also wager that a large demographic of people A) Can’t remember the last time they had a Big Mac B) Have never had a Big Mac at all or C) Have never had a Big Mac but would still identify it as a “classic” and something that “everyone’s had,” regardless of if they recognize they haven’t participated in that zeitgeist firsthand. It is the Moby Dick of fast food, the Huck Finn of roadside fare, the Pride and Prejudice of late-night drive thrus, which many have a passing familiarity with, but few have stopped to consider on its own, present merits.
Not so today.
The Big Mac has a surprisingly rich history worthy of your own outside research, but it is perhaps best comprehended by its viral-for-1974 ad campaign which simply listed all its ingredients: Two All Beef Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese, Pickles, Onions on a Sesame Seed Bun. These ingredients have remained consistent throughout the decades, canonizing a cheeseburger arrangement outside of the traditional format, omitting tomato, ketchup, and mustard entirely, as well as inserting the infamous middle bun. But again, let’s not be too hung up on the mythos of the Mac. How does it taste?
Simply put, the Big Mac is a legend for a reason. While its royal status is perhaps demystified by its longevity on the McDonald’s menu, it is without a doubt worthy of its place. While there’s a lot going on in the Big Mac, every piece harmonizes. The special sauce is, of course, a standout, as it binds many of the flavors together. The sauce, often mistaken for simple Thousand Island dressing, does contain some hints of relish, which amplifies the humble pickle chips, yet is also creamy enough to play alongside the melted cheese. It is neither lost in the other ingredients, nor overpowers them. The patties are typical of McDonald’s usual showing, which could understandably be taken as underwhelming. The beef is seasoned simply but isn’t trying to be anything it’s not. You’re not eating a beef patty, you’re eating a Big Mac, and these patties truly are made to be a part of a whole, not a standout unto themselves. The onions are also typical of the rest of McDonald’s menu, minced finely to be detectable but not overpowering, offering texture over anything else.
Lettuce is likely the most conspicuous ingredient, as it often litters the sides of the burger when you open its packaging. Yet, similar to the onions, it provides a necessary variation in texture to fully pull the Big Mac together. Of course, when accompanied by fresh fries and Coca-Cola fresh from the fountain, the full potential of the Big Mac’s flavor profile is realized and is unironically remarkable.
The Big Mac is a perfect example of the difference between perfect design and overengineering. It doesn’t mismanage its ingredients. Every component has a function, aligned to a satisfying form. Even the middle bun isn’t ostentatious. How little attention we pay to the infrastructure around us which supports our world and goes unnoticed, unassessed. And how much more beautiful the world is when we stop hearing tell of a thing’s sweetness, and instead taste it for ourselves.
4 out of 5
Pitstop Spotlight: TGI Friday’s Potato Skins Snacks (Cheddar and Bacon)
Welcome to a recurring segment in The Doggy Bag that highlights and celebrates those items that fulfill the special role of being dependable go-to picks when you’re at a convenience store and can’t make up your mind.
In a world where chip sections are either severely limited or stretch on for miles, it’s good to have something that you know can give you a satisfying snap but hit you with the sodium you crave. That’s where this often-overlooked branded snack shines the brightest. If you can’t find it with the potato chips, check near the Pringles or even Cheez-Itz because this one’s got a texture all its own. With the thickness of a Pringle that’s been hitting the gym, these potato skins are more substantial than your standard chip, without posing the danger to the roof of your mouth that kettle cooked chips do. This chip has something to prove. Touting a bold flavor profile of cheddar and bacon, they certainly hit the center of the vinn diagram of what those flavors have in common: salt. Where traditional chips can underdeliver, you can rest assured that these pack a punch, with just enough chips in the bag to make sure you don’t over do it and spend the next hour with that weird almost-raw-but-not-quite feeling on your tongue. You know the one.
A pale imitator of their namesake to be sure, but these are the truest snack crisps I’ve yet to encounter in the wild. Next time you’re on the fence, but know you want something salty, look no further.