with all the hullaballoo about the two reigning political parties’ finally nominating the two schmucks that we all knew were going to be nominated back in february, i’ve been thinking about our political system. i think part of the problem of low voter turnout that’s brought up every four years or so – which really sucks, if you’ve been keeping up with it – has something to do with peanut butter.
yes, peanut butter.
people just can’t get passionate about peanut butter, since there’s really only two choices. sure, there’s your Jif or Peter Pan, even Reeses in some places, and the ubiquitous store brands (usually the kraft brand repackaged with lower margins and cheaper printing), but look at your basic choices: creamy or crunchy. unless you’re one of those folks that goes for the all organic, no sugar or preservatives, homemade stuff that you can get for ungodly prices at the hippie vegan store (i’ll bet you vote green party, too, so you don’t count).
smooth, without chunks, or thick with chunks of nuts.
choices choices. everywhere else we have lots of choices – olive oil comes in virgin, extra virgin, cold press, first cold press, etc. but not peanut butter. crunchy or creamy is all you get. a lot of people are die-hard crunchy fans, but they’ll settle for creamy if it’s all you’ve got. it’s mostly a matter of how you were brought up. your mom bought creamy, you’ll buy creamy.
but what about all the shades of.. well, brown, in between? when we look at the weather, it no longer simply says ‘rain’ or ‘sun,’ we get the myriad shades between mostly sunny and mostly cloudy, with a smattering of partly in between. and chances of rain.
so, should the peanut butter industry start to develop ‘partly chunky with 50% chance of nuts‘ to satisfy the picky eaters out there? probably not, but choice is good, and the more niches you can satisfy, the better the world will be. if everyone made their own peanut butter, from their own home grown nuts, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but then it would be peanut butter anarchy. in a pure peanut butter democracy, we the people can demand choice if we’re not satisfied with the status quo. no longer will the picky eaters have to settle for something (or buy two jars of Jif and mix them to get just the right consistency)