Saturday, May 6, 2017

It's Not Easy Being Green

"Oh man, come here! You have to see this," Dave says, as he often does, because he's an enthusiastic guy. And I like enthusiasm, but right now he's in the toilet, and I'm wary. In fact, based on the previous forty years' experience, I'm confident I do not need to see this.

We're not shy people.  I guess there are people who never look at their own poop, but we are not those people. It's your own creation! Sometimes it's more Jackson Pollack than Michelangelo but either way it's something to behold. I'm significantly less interested in beholding someone else's opus, even if I like that person very much. I never feel the same fondness for the work. I'm perfectly happy to hear a lengthy description, or even a widthy one, but I don't need to actually lay eyes on it.

"No, really, you have to see this," he said, emerging from the bathroom and gripping my forearm in such a way that I acquiesce immediately, in order to save time. And he was right. I did need to see this.

The water in the toilet bowl was a deep, saturated viridian green, verging on charcoal.  I glanced at him in alarm but he seemed acceptably perky, and not in the last stages of a legacy disease such as Black Death. Holy shit, I thought, although this was more satanic. And to think some people might  have missed it.

"It's the ice cream," he said.

We get our ice cream around the corner. We've seen licorice ice cream that was a creamy white, so we know it's possible. But this stuff is inky. I'd already stained the kitchen sink when I rinsed the bowl. Obviously Dave was deep viridian green all the way through. If he were to have emergency surgery today, they'd slice him open and run away screaming. Dr. House would still be leaning over him with a curious look but the rest of the staff would be halfway across the parking lot.

There might be more food coloring than cream in this ice cream. Why in the world was it necessary to put so much food coloring in the ice cream? There's no need for black ice cream. We have a fancy ice cream shop down the way that specializes in odd flavors. And sometimes you can taste their ice cream and legitimately wonder which is the lemon verbena + hair conditioner, or the watermelon pickle + mushroom. But licorice isn't like that. One taste of licorice and you know what you've got. If you mistake licorice, you don't know Barney the Purple Dinosaur from Godzilla.

Well, there's talk the ancient Egyptians were coloring sweets ages ago, but food coloring didn't hit its stride  until the 1800s, when people were routinely poisoned by the additions of heavy metals such as lead and copper and arsenic, not to mention bituminous coal. In Germany there were some regulations put in place by 1882 when important people were found to be affected in the form of dropping dead, and in America, the Pure Food And Drug Act of 1906 reduced the number of acceptable food colorings from 700 to 7. Goodbye, Powdered Baboon Butt! So long, Pus Pocket Yellow! Hit the road, Hemlock #5!

Licorice ice cream is colored black in order to meet our expectations for it, just as oleomargarine is dyed yellow to meet consumers' expectations for proper butter hue, since there's no improving the flavor.  Now our food additives are strictly regulated for consumer safety, except for Orange B, which has been designated for use only in hot dog casings, where it's not the coloring that's going to get you. The remaining acceptable colorings produce only fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, empathy deficiency, and other ailments that the health establishment has determined are imaginary.

Dave's alarming output continued apace for four days before the toilet bowl contents subsided into a pleasant aqua, but I'm going to report the ice cream company to the FDA. I think they brought back bituminous coal.

30 comments:

  1. This is why I stay away from processed food. Big Food does not care whether we are healthy or not. There are SO many of us, and more being born all the time, so if some drop dead from eating unhealthily... well, others spring up to take their place, so it's all good!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Except the "others spring up to take their place" part. We need way fewer of us! (No particular suggestions how to accomplish that...)

      Delete
  2. *snap* I ate an entire box of licorice pieces last week, with similar results, although it was genuine licorice with no artificial colouring, so the water remained water coloured.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So, is licorice genuinely black? Must look that up, right after looking up "hegemony" for the hundredth time.

      Delete
    2. I'm like that with 'solipsistic'.
      But mainly for post-ironic reasons.

      Delete
    3. Well the box said no artificial colouring, I think. I'll get it out of the recycle bin and check. I remember it had four different sugars and was too sweet.

      Delete
    4. :( I was wrong. I got fooled by the box front which says "made with real root licorice extract" then on the back in tiny, tiny print we find the licorice extract is only 3.3% and the rest is glucose syrup (from corn), wheat flour, cane sugar, molasses, treacle, humectant (sorbitol), vegetable oil, colours: (Caramel 111 and Carbon Black), salt, emulsifier (monoglyceride), glazing agent (shellac), flavour.
      OMG. shellac? that's the shine on the straps I suppose. I'm disappointed and should have read the box more closely before I bought it. Now I have to research "true" licorice.
      I'm going back to buying the molasses licorice I get at my favourite health food shop. It's also very black, green-black inside and much less sweet. Still has the same after-effect colourwise though.

      Delete
    5. I hate licorice. I didn't mention that.

      Delete
  3. Oh God I laughed! We're "lookers" too. Glad to hear the licorice has passed on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wanted Dave to buy a little more of the ice cream so I could get a photo but he resolutely refused.

      Delete
  4. Years ago, a friend told me the colourful story of her child's output after having bright blue ice cream at a party.Bright blue for several days, apparently.Pantone 4247 comes close.(If you really want to know)

    ReplyDelete
  5. After chemotherapy I piddled an incredible blue colour for quite some time. About the only beautiful side-effect I can think of.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The whites of my eyes were the same shade...

      Delete
    2. This is disturbing. Mostly the eyes part. The piddle part sounds fun. Oh, and the chemotherapy part. I don't like that part at all.

      Delete
  6. Well I (and hubby) have had our surprising experiences after eating beets (which we both love) but black ice cream? I may just wait on that one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Beets are alarming the first time. So is asparagus pee. There's no reason to have licorice ice cream. Did you SEE that tub?

      Delete
  7. One of the girls when they were young had me check their poop each time. The reason? They wanted to know what diarrhea was. "Is it poop or diarrhea?" she would ask me. I would say"just poop" until the time I checked... and told her "neither! It's green!!!" Like she had eaten a crayon. Of course she's a mother now and I assume she has had similar experiences... "I'm significantly less interested in beholding someone else's opus, even if I like that person very much." I love this... It's the same at our house!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just saw an ad for that black ice cream yesterday, and wondered who on earth would eat THAT ...

    Annnnnd ... now I know.

    And in the process, I know SO MUCH MORE.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not really. Not more than you already guessed.

      Delete
  9. Long ago I had some cheap, awful pistachio ice cream from Roses and the next day my poop was pure WHITE! That was a scary moment of discovery.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Are you absolutely positive you aren't a dog and the poop wasn't a week old and in the 1950s? (Also, Rose's is where we had WHITE licorice ice cream!)

      Delete
  10. Dave is a regular Rembrandt! An old laboratory trick is to put Methylene Blue, a staining agent, into someone's brown beer bottle so they won't see it. It turns urine, sweat, and poop green, and is a terrific thing to do at a party. Hearing a scream from the bathroom is hilarious!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh I heard of that but never saw it. I'm glad it wasn't just a Lab Legend.

      Delete
  11. "Dr. House would still be leaning over him with a curious look but the rest of the staff would be halfway across the parking lot." Another brilliant piece of writing and damn funny. Only for you would I read an entire blog post about poop.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Only I am likely to have an entire blog post about poop, let alone several dozen. Thanks!

      Delete
  12. And all the little bacteria were aghast at being forced to colour themselves Licorice. Traumatized bacteria are not a good thing, ergo dark green end product, the colour of bacterial shame. <--- Scientific fact.

    ReplyDelete