I've decided to eat chips with what they claim to taste like (read Part 1 here). SPOILER: I've discovered I'm the first person to ever do this, and that includes the people who made the chips.
Cheetos
You can tell that cheetah's got 'Tude because you want to punch him in the face
Opening the bag there's a strong smell, which was as far as Frito-Lay took artificial cheese technology before giving up. You can almost see the snackologists shrugging "Well, it stinks, and cheese stinks, so close enough." Luckily, bulk chip eaters share the Hulk's strategy of "stronger is better" (they also share his average mass), so the fact it tastes like a calf threw up doesn't affect sales. This is why cheetos is the first snack popular enough to become an insult: "cheeto-stained" automatically suggests basements, and an abundance of scantily-clad-anime-figures. The phrase crams more insult into fewer syllables than an angry haiku.
One bag of cheetos contains a quarter of the sodium you're allowed in a day. And that's only the small bag, which exists in the same way as midget porn: some people may be into it, but don't ever pretend it's the norm.
The World's Worst Cheese Plate
I offered myself cheetos* accompanied by a selection of cheeses.
*I'll be damned if I'm going to capitalize powdered packing foam.
Clockwise from top left: Parmesan, an aged Manchego, Raw Cow Jersey, A Goddamn Insult, and a peppered Raclette.
I included some wine, because wine and cheese go well together, and because I'm not doing this sober. I included it in a beaker because if I'm insulting the cheese, there's no reason grape juice should get off easy.
I tried one pellet of snack with each, and can now confirm that when cheetos call themselves "Dangerously Cheesy"...
... this is absolutely true, in the same way heart medicine made of nothing but battery acid would be "Dangerously Medicinal." As in "Dangerous due to being the exact opposite of what it claims."
Cheese is an incredibly varied spectrum of culinary delight, covering a range of tastes and textures. Amazingly, of all the thousands of cheeses, not one has the "packing foam" texture, for the same reason UFC fighters don't choose the "Amputate your own arms" style of grappling. Calling these "cheesy" is a lie, plain and simple.
I considered asking my local cheese store which dairy product cheetos most resembled...
... but felt it was too risky. I've heard if you're laughed at by a cheese store cashier, you have to return your testicles to the Manliness Council.
Salt and Vinegar
Throwing salt and vinegar on something is the laziest possible way to flavor it, and still the best. You could salt and vinegar wood shavings and I'd still eat them and, according to memories of childhood birthday parties, I probably did.
Beer may be proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy (thanks Franklin!), but Salt is proof we're meant to live well instead of long. It's a rock you can eat. It's Sodium and Chlorine working together, as if poison itself saw the error of its ways and tried to make it up to everything alive. Salt has long been one of the most desired compounds in existence -- the Romans used it for pay, witches us it for magic circles, aliens even board our advanced Federation starships for just one thing.
They're only after you for your NaCl
So after thousands of years of salt being the best thing ever, these chips are wimpier than a fistfight with Woody Allen. They're even paler than normal potato chips, as if to say, "Sure, we might be summoning the two simplest, most powerful flavors in culinary history, but that doesn't mean you should expect anything."
Salt and Vinegar Squared:
The solution changed texture as I prepared it, just like Hollywood's best terrifying serums. It thickens to release a scent that strips the lining off your nose and tongue, as if even the chemicals feel bad about what's coming and are trying to remove your sense of taste.
The result: when you dissolve salt in vinegar, VINEGAR WINS. It leads off with a cutting edge like I'd stuck my tongue out at Freddy Kreuger, in the closest my tongue has ever come to a sense-based shutdown signal. I've eaten far more intense things, but they were actual foods -- this input was so utterly unbalanced in one direction, it was like a feedback squeal through my sense of taste.
So I added more salt.
I'm fairly sure there's a chapter in the Geneva convention about this.
This is without question the worst thing I have ever done to myself. I had flavor-induced lockjaw for a full ten seconds (or as I experienced it, forever). It was like a chemical fire burning out my ability to feel joy. After all this time, Sodium and Chlorine seemed to say, "Hell, let's be poisons again for old time's sake!" I was convinced I had just created a black hole -- it was sucking my entire face in, and I could not open my mouth to spit it out.
Any time you hear about secret government-programmed assassins, you should be scared, because it's possible. If someone made me feel like this again, and told me that stabbing you would make it stop, the last thing you'd see is the plate of thinly sliced sashimi that used to be your legs.
After that, I tried the chips on their own again. They tasted like thin discs of styrofoam served at an accounting convention.
Please continue to Part 3: Let's Get Saucy!
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