Heart
Beat Foods
Div. GFA Brands, Inc.
PO Box 397
Cresskill, NJ 07626-0397
October 13, 1999
Dear People:
I recently purchased a pound of your Nucoa Smart Beat Trans Fat Free
Super Light Margarine at my local Grocery Outlet ("overstocks
and discontinued merchandise at up to 70% off original retail price").
I am hoping that your product falls into the latter category: taste
aside (which isn't much more than slick-salty), it is completely useless.
Saints
of the day include, but are not limited to, Saint Edward the
Confessor, Faustus, Januarius, Martial, Comgan, Gerald of Auriilac,
Coloman, and Maurice of Carnoet.
The packaging promised that the product inside, pictured as thick
and yellow, "won't saturate foods with fat." Damned right,
it won't. The stuff doesn't melt. You can stick a glob of it on a
plate and nuke it for a full minute on high and all it gets is a little
bit shinier and hotter than the hinges of hell. The package said that
the product "stays visible on food." What it didn't say
was that it stayed visible on food in the same way as an eight-ball,
plopped onto a pile of mashed potatoes, stays visible: It doesn't
change at all.
The box also said the stuff "won't soak foods with water."
Right. Again, it won't melt. It won't soak food with ANYTHING.
Of course, this opens all sorts of avenues for speculation. If
boiling spuds can't change the nature of a dollop of this stuff, how
much can you expect a human digestive tract to do to it? If you can
nuke it and fry it and boil it and it still looks just about the same,
what the heck is it? Silly putty? An advanced case of Velveeta?
While I would like some sort of explanation for this product's existence,
I don't need a refund since Grocery Outlet has a satisfaction-guaranteed
full refund policy in order to entice its customers to purchase not
only Nucoa Smart Beat Margarine, but also things like straw mushrooms,
Valley Gem Crowder Peas, and pureed mutton. Why I shop there is a
mystery in itself.
I also have some environmental concerns regarding your product. Do
you know how long the half-life is? What is the suggested method of
safe disposal? Should it be stored (and apparently it never really
rots--this package doesn't expire until the end of NEXT summer) near
invalids or small children? What should you do if you get it in your
eyes?
