Thank You Menchie's for Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle

Just the other day, I took my family to Menchie’s, a new frozen yogurt franchise, among a growing number of self-serve frozen dessert locations popping up in and around the greater Toronto area.  While eating my pure chocolate and cupcake frozen yogurt covered with an array of toppings, my wife and I scanned the store and were pleased to note the many health claims of the Menchie's brand:

“Menchie’s yogurt comes from ‘Happy Canadian Cows’”

“Our frozen yogurt contains live and active cultures that promote a healthy lifestyle”

“Canadian milk contains protein and calcium for healthy lifestyles”

Finally, an alternative dessert option that really understands our values.  I mean who wants yogurt from those oppressed North Korean cows or those socialist French cows or those Chinese cows that are ruled under a dictatorship.  And unlike Canadian milk, cows in countries like Japan are stuffed with uranium and plutonium and those Italian cows, well, we know they are merely vessels to transport money, drugs and sopressata for the mafia. 

Menchie’s yogurt contains the live and active cultures found in real yogurt.  Never mind that it’s the 6^th ingredient after sugar, corn syrup solids, skim powder and stabilizer.  That’s missing the point.  Menchie’s has worked hard to eliminate ingredients like high fructose corn syrup from its yogurt and instead has glucose-fructose, propylene glycol, citric acid, ethyl alcohol, and sodium benzoate. 

And to those cynics out there who proclaim that this is just as bad, let me remind you of the alternative socialist regime where options beyond sliced bread are limited.  A capitalist society requires that we forgo our health for the greater good…of Menchies.  Menchie’s has to have some unhealthy ingredients in its products, otherwise it would cease to exist.  I mean, there are no other options.

Think about it, natural yogurt ingredients are prohibitively expensive.  Why waste time with natural ingredients when we can replace them with cheap artificial ones?  Sure, corn isn’t a natural ingredient in yogurt but it’s really cheap so why not replace some of the more expensive natural ingredients with corn syrup solids and guar gum?  And to those leftists out there who argue that it’s not really yogurt anymore, all we need to do is add the vitamins and active cultures afterwards.  What’s the difference?

And what about the flavours?  One option is to use real food such as mango slices or pure mango juice in the yogurt.  But why do that when you can simply engineer flavours.  Let’s be honest, the 4 billion years it took to create the complex array of chemical components found in nature’s bounty is no match to the intellectual prowess we gained these last 200 years in chemical engineering.  That’s why Menchie’s prides itself on a team of taste engineers who can engineer flavours without having to resort to the use of natural ingredients.  Take blue raspberry, for example (what the f*&* is blue raspberry?).  Sure one option is to combine blueberries and raspberries to provide our customers with the nutritional value of real fruit, value that nature figured out a long time ago.  But that’s really expensive and difficult to work with.  Not only that, we’re way smarter than Mother Nature.  Another option is to create the impression of blue raspberry with a picture of a blue raspberry at the dispenser that disguises the fact that what constitutes the flavour is sugar, water, citric acid, natural and artificial flavours, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and food colouring blue #1. 

Another reason why Menchies avoids the burden of nature’s bounty is because they are so very excited to see us again.  You see, nature doesn’t have the same level of addictive qualities found in refined sugar.  That’s why they have a wide array of toppings that, on the one hand are so incredibly cheap, but on the other psychologically wire you to come back for more.  And no doubt we as consumers are eager to return.  So why bother providing real fruit and real yogurt when all we’re going to do is return at a rate that would keep obesity levels at an all time low.  Who wants that? 

No, thank you Menchies…thank you for a revolutionary business model that reverse engineers Mother Nature and provide us with what we really need – ingredients that are as cheap in cost as they are in nutrition and that share addictive qualities of tobacco.