PB&J

    Since Aldi started selling REALLY good gluten-free bread, a lot of stuff has come back into my life, from French onion soup (of sorts) to egg-salad sandwiches. But the humble PB&J is no longer particularly humble. Organic peanut butter costs $7. Raspberry preserves are $3 or $4; I can't remember. The bread is $4 for a little loaf. And it winds up tasting like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
    What this tells us is that the manufacturers do a good job making fake crap. The cheap peanut butter with all the preservatives and ingredients having nothing to do with peanuts really does taste like real peanut butter. All those ingredients presumably make it possible to make it cheap and sell it for a long time. (That's what preservatives do after all.) And the same is true of the jelly and the bread.
    But I think companies underestimate us, and always have. I think people want companies to figure out how to mass-produce food without all the preservatives. If the costs came down, everybody would eat healthier food. It stands to reason that if the crappy food is cheaper, most people will save money and buy crappy food. I myself know that I should eat organic, but I just can't see paying the surcharge required to do so. I don't know, but I think the glut of preservatives are what is producing all the autistic kids today. My own autistic tendencies have at least tempered a bit since I started laying off preservatives. Try us, won't you companies? We might surprise you.