Taking license with real estate

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Greg

Quick quiz for those planning their first visit to Silicon Valley. You’re at a networking event (Valley equivalent of a cocktail party), and you overhear some people talking about “real estate problems”. They are most likely referring to:

A. Whether or not the San Francisco Board of Supes will approve a SOMA warehouse conversion to office space for 10 social media startups.

B. The fact that, even after the housing bust, a tarpaper-roof shack in Cupertino is still going for more than half a mill.

C. How much interaction you can cram onto a touch screen measuring three-and-a-half inches on the diagonal.

D. Any and all of the above.

Livin’ the dream, Cupertino edition

Hang around here long enough, and eventually, “D” becomes the right answer. But “C” raises some interesting points. For the same reasons that a fish has trouble understanding the concept of “wet”, we often take for granted, and have little insight into, the impact of the design of humans on things humans design.

In an article by AP’s Peter Svensson, there’s a report of a peculiar disconnect from a company that we’ve come to associate with product winners: Apple Computer. Svensson quotes the late Steve Jobs as dismissive of smaller tablet computers’ “… clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touch screen before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum…”

If you responded “Huh?”, you may not appreciate the brilliance of Mr. Jobs, but at least you’ll agree with me and Peter Svensson, who closes the article with: “Jobs failed to mention Apple’s success developing apps that use taps, flicks and pinches on the iPhone, with its 3.5-inch screen.”

Field-of-vision math: 26” TV…

Although I’m aware of the physical limits on the input side, I always thought that the output-side issues provided the stronger argument against increasingly small devices. Years ago I read somewhere that going to the movies to see something on the “big screen” was simply a psychological illusion: someone calculated the percent of your field of vision taken up by a movie theater screen and a home television, and found that, contrary to all intuition, the TV took up more simply because it’s so much closer.

I didn’t believe that article then, and I don’t actually believe it now…but I will, if I see the math. Below, the results of my own experiments.

…15” laptop…

I’ve always been annoyed by new product announcements showing smart phones with sports fans glued to events streaming live to their tiny display areas. How close would you have to get to even figure out what teams were playing, let alone appreciate the plays?

…or 3.5’ iPhone? Surprising answers!

The answers will surprise you. In the table below, all measurements of length are in inches (standard in the US, for diagonal measurement of screen sizes); the other numbers are ratios. The other key to understanding this table is that the input numbers are in blue; derived numbers in red.

Device Diagonal Viewing Distance Ratio
Television

26

168

6.5
Sony VAIO (laptop)

15

22

1.5
iPhone (TV equivalent)

3.5

22.6

6.5
iPhone (laptop equivalent)

3.5

5.1

1.5

No amazement in the first two lines. I sometimes watch television on the laptop, sometimes on the living room TV. Both are very acceptable, however, per my expectations, the laptop takes up much more of my field of vision.

However, the shocker is in line 3, which proves: an iPhone, the same distance from my eyes as my laptop screen, will cover the same amount of my field of vision as the living room TV!

Counterintuitive? Yes. Reproduceable? Like all good science, absolutely; all you need is a tape measure. Will your results be exactly the same? Probably not, because there will be some variation in both viewing distance and device screen size. But, things will come out in the same ballpark.

So, Steve Jobs had a blind spot on the input side, and I’ve completely misfired on the output end. I can hear our readers asking themselves: “If this issue throws off Steve Jobs and Greg Marus, what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Stay tuned for the next post.

–Greg Marus

Posted in Gadgets, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Son of Naive Domestic Slider

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Greg

Legendary Cravers Harold and Kumar

For everyone who enjoyed our previous post, “It’s a naive domestic slider without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption”, please have a look at the latest from our sister blog, Brand Name Awards:

White Castle, of Columbus, Ohio, is accepting entries of stories and reminiscences about the restaurants and its foods for its Cravers Hall of Fame contest. Winners will be inducted into the Cravers Hall of Fame.

The entry deadline is July 31, 2012. More information is available in this article, and at this page of the White Castle web site.

Posted in Fast Food, Food, Meat, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tetter and Kibes

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Greg

“She works at St. Veronica’s hospital, lives nearby at the home of a Mrs. Quoad, a lady widowed long ago and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases: greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy.”

–Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, 1973

Thomas Pynchon...Portrait of the Reclusive Literary Genius as a Young Man

The quote from the inimitable Mr. Pynchon is by way of support for a thesis implicit in several of my posts: health issues, whether they relate to diseases or cures thereof, are subject to human fashions.

Anyone who disputes this point a) obviously, does not count even one hypochondriac among his friends, and b) is likely too young to remember the great Red Wine Allergy scare of the 1980s.

Yes, red wine, like caffeine before it and gluten today, took its turn as the great ingestible villain. During that period, I personally knew at least half-a-dozen people who claimed to have this affliction. Frankly, I would have given this whole thing a lot more credit if any two of them presented with the same set of symptoms. Nope, they were all over the road: flushing faces, nasal congestion, racing heartbeat, a loosening of the kneecaps, a flaming sensation in the eyebrows…

A good friend of mine finally took this craze to what I firmly believe to be its logical conclusion. After much thought and experimentation, she came to the realization that it wasn’t the color of the wine she was sensitive to, but the quality of it. Her circle of acquaintances was put on notice that it was fine to serve her red wine—as long as it was good expensive red wine, not a cheap, inferior version.

I often wonder what would have happened had she had the chance to meet another friend of mine, the late Art Poulos. Art was a wine connoisseur, an enthusiast of music and audio systems, an ailurophile, and most of all, an original thinker.

I once gave Art a bottle of wine as a gift. On a subsequent visit, I casually inquired “How was the wine?”

“That depends,” replied Art. “How much did you pay for it?”

???

“It’s really pretty simple. Given what that wine was like, I think it was comparable to wines for which I’ve paid about $10 a bottle, and come away satisfied. Now, though it was a good $10 wine, it was a terrible $20 wine. Conversely, if you got it for $5, then it was a great wine!”

World's Best Wine? By the logic of Art Poulos, maybe so...

Art was merely applying the well-known concept of “price-performance ratio” to a product, which, for whatever reason, has been largely immune to it. Once someone like Art has pointed it out, it’s hard to understand why the thinking is not more widely applied. In Silicon Valley, “price-performance ratio” is a very basic concept in the computer industry. Yet, other products—at least in their high-end, luxury market sub-segments—are constantly spared being subject to this kind of reasoning. Think watches and handbags.

Following Art’s logic, then the world’s best wines may be those made by Charles Shaw and sold at (among other places) Trader Joe’s for $2 a bottle (whence the affectionately ironic nickname “Two-Buck Chuck”.)

Well, more on cheap/good wines, loss leaders, supermarkets, distribution, etc. in upcoming posts. In the meantime, I’ve got to take a break from the PC—my kibes are acting up, and I’ve got impostumes the size of a—

–Greg Marus

P.S. In case you’re wondering:

“Actually, Art, I shelled out $7 for it.”

“In that case, Greg, I enjoyed a really good wine!”

 

Posted in Beverages, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Better Lucky Than Good

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Greg

Per our previous post “M-m-m-m-m…Meat”, just about anyone in the food business may be vulnerable to the latest study showing your product has some kind of terrible long-term effect on the health of its consumers.

However, there is a corollary: these same reports can come as an unexpected blessing if your product happens to be a substitute good for the ones taking their turn in the barrel. What’s horrible for Hormel and Harris Ranch turns out to be great for Gorton’s and terrific for Tyson.

Inherently caffeine free…The UnCola

The extent to which the products which benefit are considered healthy in the first place varies considerably, but that generally doesn’t stop an imaginative marketing department. A few years back, during one of the periodic caffeine scares, some look-alive types at 7-Up came up with a nifty assault on their cola rivals: a campaign built around the slogan “7-Up: Never Had It, Never Will.” The ads made clear that the antecedent of “it” was the demon caffeine.

Gluten-free…

No gluten here…

Houston, we have some gluten.

General Mills faced some different challenges when the recent gluten controversy heated up. The tricky thing about gluten is that it exists in some, but not all, grains. Enter Chex commercials pointing out that Rice Chex and Corn Chex are gluten-free. The ads also have an actually readable disclaimer at the bottom, pointing out that several of their breakfast cereals, such as Wheat Chex, are emphatically not gluten-free. (Unfortunately for celiac sufferers, neither is the bagged version of my favorite variation on Chex, the snack mix. The good news is that the do-it-yourself recipe for this treat is widely available, and you just need to sub Rice or Corn Chex for the Wheat Chex in your home-made version.)

IMO, one of the oddest ad campaigns is currently showing on television, courtesy of Bayer, which managed the trick of being simultaneously the victim and beneficiary of scientists looking into the effects of aspirin.

A brief review for our younger readers: after its introduction as an over-the-counter drug, aspirin was the go-to remedy for pain relief, so much so that countless jokes about lazy or uncaring doctors ended with the same punch line: “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” But aspirin quickly attracted competitors (Anacin dates from 1916). As the competition among analgesics increased, some of these were promoted with TV ads that often induced the head-throbbing that the product was intended to relieve. (If you’re too young to have experienced Anacin’s “Mother, please, I’d rather do it myself!”, just count yourself lucky.)

The final chapter in this story started when scientists noticed that aspirin seemed to have a beneficial effect on the heart, both as a daily prophylactic (the low-dose tablets), and with larger doses as first aid for those actually having a heart attack. Great publicity for Bayer? Well, yes—except that the public association with aspirin as a heart medicine has apparently become so strong that some younger folks are unaware that it still works as a pain killer! Hence the ad where an airline passenger suffering from backache explains to the stewardess he’s not having a heart attack, and she gently reminds him that (Bayer) aspirin is still a pretty good analgesic.

So far we’ve seen that the health benefits of different products seem to go in and out of fashion. Is the same true of diseases as well? Stay tuned for our next post.

–Greg Marus

Posted in Analgesics, Cereals, Food, Meat, Medicine, Soft drinks | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

They’re not doctors…

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Greg

…and some of them don’t even play them on TV. Nonetheless, various celebrities feel free to weigh in on various aspects of the gluten controversies, with Miley Cyrus endorsing a gluten-free regimen for us all.

Miley Cyrus—M.C., not M.D.

And, if you can’t trust health and medical advice from Miley Cyrus…well, in one man’s opinion, the terrorists have won.

Actually, per previous disclaimers on this blog, you ought to consult your physician if you have any questions, issues, symptoms, etc. concerning your diet or other health matters. But…sometimes the medical professionals might not tell you what you expect (or hope) to hear.

While celiac disease—a strong, chronic, and sometimes downright dangerous reaction to gluten in the diet—is a well-established medical condition, there is not yet (and may never be) a medical consensus that most of the population would derive any benefits from avoiding gluten. The underlying difference in world-view is whether gluten problems are binary or spectrum in nature.

Things like malaria and Lyme disease are binary in the sense that an individual either has them—or not. Things like ragweed allergies, on the other hand, can range from scarcely noticeable to life-threatening, with many people not sensitive to the irritant at all. Despite celiac disease’s resemblance to a food allergy, most of the articles I’ve seen suggest that the MDs currently put it in the have-it-or-you-don’t category.

Which means we can rely on another celebrity for our health tips—on one of his recent shows, Jay Leno said something to the effect that “I never knew how good gluten tasted until I tried a gluten-free pizza.”

And, closing the loop: our last post (on meat) ended with a nod to Burger King. Most of our US readership has by now seen TV commercials about new healthier items on the Burger King menu. Guess who appears in one of these commercials? Our pal, Mr. Leno. And, what’s the latest twist at Burger King? A list of gluten-free menu items.

A gluten-free menu item from Burger King

Coming up in our next post: from gluten to caffeine to aspirin—health trends and fads that influence branding and product positioning. Stay tuned!

–Greg Marus

Posted in Cereals, Food, Meat | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

M-m-m-m-m…Meat!

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Greg

As promised, after a Lenten post on seafood, a Brighter Products take on the wonderful world of meat.

Authentic Asia™ products from CP Brands

Unfortunately, as I was surfing the Internet between cans of Chicken of the Sea sardines in mustard sauce and sips of the (IMO, incredibly tasty) Authentic Asia™ Shrimp Tom Yum Soup, I kept running across a raft of articles epitomized by:

“Cutting red meat intake could lengthen lifespan, Harvard study finds”.

Killjoys at Harvard continue to give Puritans a bad name…

Per the news release on the study, “…red meat eaters had a higher risk of dying compared with those whose diets relied upon other sources of protein such as fish, chicken, nuts, or low-fat dairy products.” To which one can only add: thank God for Foster Farms.

Well, the latest bad news on red meat makes me feel better about my Lent-and-Fridays regimen, particularly in light of news articles that takes the wind out of even that sail:

“Fish Oil for Heart Attack Prevention: Is It a Myth?

A new study finds that omega-3 fatty acids don’t help patients with heart disease avoid future heart-related problems.”

The good news is that a closer reading of the latest omega-3 study confirms something that has always appealed to my intuition: that the health benefits are more closely related to ingesting whatever the “magic ingredient” happens to be in its naturally-occurring food form than swallowing some kind of pill extract.

And, from the Harvard study: “In other words, what we include in our diet is as important as what we exclude, so substituting healthier foods for red meat provides a double benefit to our health.”

Or, to turn it around, some of the health benefits of seafood come from the fact that they serve as substitute goods for red meat in our diets. If memory serves, the very first studies that got excited about omega-3s looked at the high-fish diet of some Native Alaskans who were remarkably free of heart disease. And, the very first articles debunking omega-3’s benefits were those that concluded that the improved health came from the fact that every meal that involved a steak from a salmon didn’t use one from a cow.

Burger King’s iconic Whopper

So, with another Lent in our rear-view mirrors (even for the Eastern Orthodox, who celebrated Easter on April 15 in 2012), can we find some good news on the meat front? Well, our pals at Burger King are now promoting a healthier menu; more on that and related in our next post. Stay tuned…

Greg Marus

 

Trust me on this…new Grilled Essentials from Hillshire Farm…you won’t regret!

P.S. File under evidence of a Merciful God…I’m posting on the Friday after Orthodox Easter, which, as compensation for the grueling (in some cases, literally) Great Lent, is a fast-free day. Michelina’s and Hillshire Farm on my menu today!

Posted in Food, Meat, Seafood | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Opine On Fine Wine from the Argentine

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Greg

Pawn Stars (l. to r.): Corey, Chumlee, Rick, and Richard

One of my favorite History Channel shows is Pawn Stars, the original (and, IMO, best) reality series about a family-owned pawn shop. At the center of the show is Rick Harrison, proprietor of the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop of Las Vegas, Nevada. Rick is aided (and often “aided”) by his father Richard, son Corey, and employee Chumlee, the Sancho Panza of the outfit.

Rick routinely displays knowledge of history and Americana that would grace any university or museum, but there are times when even he can’t get a handle on some of the Smithsonian-on-acid one-off oddities and novelties that come through his door.

At this point, the personable and affable Rick demonstrates the value of networking, as he always has a friend who just happens to know about…whatever. The rest of the sequence goes something like this:

Excited Prospective Customer: I just found this genuine antique Inuit whalebone back-scratcher cleaning out my great-aunt’s attic. Am I rich, or what?

Rick: You know, it’s not really my area of expertise…let me call my buddy Lothar.

(Enter Lothar, proprietor of Lothar’s Genuine Antique Backscratchers Emporium.)

Lothar: Well, it is genuine whalebone, and the carvings are the ones that were all the rage among the Inuits in the 1880s. Unfortunately, you seem to have overlooked the “Made In China” etched on the end of the thing, so…

Mist at Deep Creek Cellars

At Brighter Products, with the world of consumer goods as our topic, it became pretty clear early on that we’ll need to emulate Rick’s approach. Fortunately, we’ve already had the privilege of working with Paul Roberts, proprietor of Deep Creek Cellars (and, full disclosure: spouse of my cousin, Nadine Grabania.)

Paul was kind enough to aid me when our Comments box caught a question from one of our readers (more full disclosure: a good friend of mine since my high-school days), asking for advice on Mendozan wines from Argentina. Here are a few of the points Paul’s provided us with:

  • Mendoza is not unlike the northern central Valley of California: it’s not about perpetual greatness, but about being able to do almost anything agriculturally pretty well.
  • All grapes grown in desert conditions will make, in competent hands, attractive wines — big flavors, full-body, high-extract, high-alcohol — but precisely because conditions are so favorable, the wines are often less memorable.
  • That said, for $8.99 you’ll get a very nice wine full of everything a fine wine should have at a very modest price.
  • There is an 18-wheeler worth of brands, so spend forty or fifty bucks and try a few of the big houses. You won’t feel cheated once.

    Crios Torrontes from Argentina

  • Argentina has also popularized what are elsewhere unheard of or unheralded varietals — the white Torrontes, and two reds, Bonarda and the superstar, Malbec. For under $10 not much from California (especially outside of California) can touch them for chunky, powerfully flavored reds.

    Maipe Bonarda from Argentina

  • Finally, you may be able to find an even better bargain for this type of wine by going with a Tempranillo from Spain, though give the Argentines’ time — word is that some tasty Tempranillos will work their way north soon.

    Argento Malbec from Argentina

    Tapeña Temporillo from Spain

The mention of Spanish wine is a perfect note on which to remind our readers who have yet to do so: check out the Brighter E.U. blog, covering consumer goods made in Europe. My thanks again to Paul, and over to you, Rosie!

–Greg Marus

Posted in Beverages, Wine | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It Wasn’t Broke, but We’ll Fix It…and Fix It GOOD

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Greg

Another inspiration from sister blog Brand Name Awards: an outfit called Product of the Year USA is accepting entries for the Product of the Year 2012 awards in categories such as food, beverages, personal care, household care, etc. A unique aspect of this award is that the sponsors partner with TNS, a research agency, to determine winners by polling actual consumers.

Good idea? Yes. Simple idea? Yes, again. Obvious idea? A trifecta. An idea that occurred to whoever it was at Kraft who decided to rebrand the company’s products with the name “Mondelez”? Apparently, too much to ask.

What possessed these people? My favorite theory is that someone in Kraft management spotted a few members of the “New Coke” team sleeping beneath an underpass, decided they’d been punished enough, and…okay, you explain it.

Kraft icons, from Velveeta...

How bad is it? Try this little test (this works as of April 6, 2012, so no guarantee that it might not be fixed if you try it in the future): go to the Kraft web site (guess what? It’s www.kraft.com) and type “Mondelez” into the search box on the upper right. This “brand” baffles Kraft’s own search engine!

Thinking I had mis-typed from memory, I decided to rummage around their press releases. Sure enough, I found the gem from March 21, 2012, in which the new brand is spelled…Mondelez. (To be sure, I cut-and-pasted “Mondelez” to avoid any possible typing errors.)

But the fun isn’t over yet. Here’s the press release headline (also reproduced via text editor cut-and-paste, rather than re-keying):

“Kraft Foods Proposes Mondelēz International, Inc. As New Name For Global Snacks Company.”

Note the diacritical mark; Kraft can’t even keep things straight in their own press release! Is it “Mondelēz” or “Mondelez”? Whichever it is, that means the pronunciation guide (always a sign your brand launch will go smoothly) of “(pronounced ‘mohn-dah-LEEZ’)” is wrong  for one or the other. (BTW: can you spell “Kraft”? Can you pronounce “Kraft”? Thought so.)

...to Cheeze Whiz...

Don’t get me wrong—I very much like and use any number of products from Kraft. But, to give the devil his due: per OWS, I think this makes me one of the 99% of Americans with Kraft products in the fridge and cupboard. Irene Rosenfeld, Kraft CEO, is clearly one of the 1%, with a 2011 compensation package worth $15.7 million.

...to Brie-scarfing CEO, Irene Rosenberg

Here’s an idea, Irene: time to dump the Camembert and Stilton, maybe try a little Cheeze Whiz and Velveeta.

–Greg Marus

Posted in Cheese, Food | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Hands Across the Water, Blogs Across the Sky”

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Greg

As regular readers of this blog know, we love to have links, cross-pollination, references to other blogs and sites, etc., informing our coverage of the consumer products world. This post has a trifecta of connections to other points of interest, far-flung geographically, but united by several themes:

Ecologic Brands' molded fiber bottle

First is another inspiration from our sister blog, Brand Name Awards, where we often report on awards for branding and packaging. The latest: the 2012 AmeriStar Awards for packaging innovation, from The Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP). The extensive list of categories includes, among others, food, beverages, electronics, household products, beauty aids, and so on. The complete list of winners is worth checking out; but the first thing that I noticed was the clean/green nature of the entry that won both Best of Show and 3M Sustainability Awards: Ecologic Brands, Inc.’s molded fiber bottle.

International Boost

This reminded me of another company tackling recycling of packaging with a quite different technology. The life of a free-lance consultant is rarely dull, but often multi-hatted: I also sometimes work for a EU-oriented marketing consultancy called International Boost (IB). IB had a client from France called Eco2Distrib, which created a product based on the insight that re-using plastic containers is inherently more efficient than re-cycling same. Their gadget is capable of re-filling containers with just about anything liquid—from wine to Windex to Wisk. There are a number of other competitors in this space, but the Eco2distrib guys have a lot of bells and whistles—ranging from the number of different liquids you can pump through a single “filling station”, to automatic cutoffs to prevent spillage, to generating bar codes to pay for however much laundry detergent you decided to buy, and so on. Altogether, IMO, a fascinating and useful implementation of technology in an area not often addressed by us in Silicon Valley. (Though in need of a functioning “English” button on their web site, which didn’t seem to be working last time I looked. Don’t worry; if you’re interested in this outfit, contact us here at Brighter Products and we can locate some English-language literature and contacts for you.)

When I first proposed writing about Eco2Distrib, Athol put a hold on my global ambitions, and told me to concentrate on U.S.-based products. Why? A blog called Brighter E.U. was in his pipeline, and I can’t think of a better time to welcome Rosie and the rest of the Spain-based team there to the Brighter Marketing Network. Those of you either reading this from your residences in Europe, or just interested in product trends from that part of the world, have a look and check them out. Looking forward to reading their posts, and sharing inspiration with them in the future.

–Greg Marus

Posted in Packaging | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Ce-ce-ce-liac, you’re breaking my heart…”

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Greg

…and you’re not doing my small intestine much good, either.

Jimmy Bufffett's Gluten-free Cheeseburger

Celiac disease, or gluten intolerance, came on to my radar when I spotted Cheeseburger in Paradise’s Back to Basics Burger, Jimmy Buffett’s burger with a gluten-free bun, named on Yahoo!’s list of Best and Worst burgers.

[Disclaimer: I have no medical training, and this is not a medical advice column, although I do believe my discussion to be sensible and accurate. If you have any reason to believe you have gluten intolerance, or any sort of food allergy, consult your physician for appropriate tests, advice, and treatment.]

I became interested in this topic when a friend and co-worker was diagnosed with celiac disease. Basically, a reaction to gluten, a substance found in wheat and other (but not all) grains prevents celiac sufferers from properly digesting and absorbing nutrients from their food. One thing that makes the disease so nasty is that there can be many different reactions to this kind of digestive/nutritional problem, so patients present with a wide variety of symptoms, few of which are of the “Doctor, it hurts here!” variety. Thus, celiac can go undiagnosed and mis-diagnosed for years on end. (Because our friend was also a heavy smoker, all of us at that company assumed that was the cause of her insomnia and headaches. Giving up smoking is still a good idea, but tobacco turned out not to be the cause of those particular problems.)

Celiac disease is a powerful good news/bad news joke. Bad news first: you’ll undergo a wrenching lifestyle change, as you check packages for ingredients, get a whole new set of cookbooks, and realize that more than 80% of the menu at fast food and Italian restaurants is forever off-limits. The good news: the huge life change is not just necessary, but, in most cases, sufficient. Weed the gluten out of your diet, and you don’t need operations, injections, therapy, expensive pills with funny side effects—just really watch what you eat.

OK, so you throw out wheat—what else do to watch out for? Also avoid rye, and barley. OK, you say—no more pumpernickel, and barley—just dump certain soups from Campbell’s and Progresso, no?

Back that truck up, Pedro. Part of my readership has ingested barley in the last 24 hours—without even realizing it. It comes from those cans and bottles of barley juice in the fridge—more commonly know as “beer”. And (you knew it was coming sooner or later), a true story…

Feeling sorry for my friend, I went down to my local BevMo, after finding Redbridge, the Anheuser-Busch gluten-free beer, on the Internet. In most of the world (except Germany, with beer purity laws dating to the Middle Ages) it’s possible to brew beer from a variety of things other than barley. I figured a 5-pack (started at 6, but I planned on testing it to make sure it was drinkable) would cheer her up.

Couldn’t find it, and was heading out the door, when the BevMo clerk asked me if he could help. When I explained my mission, he said, “Well, we don’t have Redbridge, but every so often we get a request for gluten-free beer, and we carry two other brands of it.” When I asked for his advice about which one to take, he said most people preferred the one that was cheaper by $1 per six-pack.

??? Okay, I’ll bite: “If the more expensive one doesn’t taste as good, why does anyone buy it?” “Because it’s kosher.”

Now I’ve gone through some rough times, but whenever I start to feel really sorry for myself, I stop and think there’s some poor beer-drinker out there…with celiac disease…who’s trying to keep kosher. Your life looks a little better now, doesn’t it?

More on gluten, food sensitivities, and diet, from healthy habits to foolish fads, in upcoming posts.

–Greg Marus

Posted in Beer, Beverages, Cereals, Fast Food | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment