The Star Tribune has a recurring food feature in its Variety section called The 5 Best Things We Ate Last Week. One of the items today was a donut... which, fine. Yay donuts! But I noticed it had sprinkles on it, and that made me think of one of my (probably irrational) minor hatreds.
(This is not the donut featured in the Star Tribune. This is a public domain photo of a donut with sprinkles.)
Here is my minor hatred: Sprinkles come from the 8th circle of hell.
I don't know when I developed this intense dislike for them. As a child, I tolerated them because I thought they were supposed to be there, and they were colorful. But at some point I understood they were empty marketing for whatever food they were on, and then I realized they were worse than that: they decreased my enjoyment of whatever they were on.
Ice cream: smooth and creamy coldness. Sprinkles: little bits of grit.
Chocolate frosted donut or other pastry: doughy and fatty with smooth sugary topping. Sprinkles: little bits of grit.
Cakes and cupcakes: moist floury goodness with, one hopes, frosting worth eating. Sprinkles: little bits of grit that make the frosting disposable.
I don't care that sprinkles are made from sugar and will therefore dissolve. They don't do it fast enough. They are grit, and they're only there to increase eye appeal, not mouth appeal.
Yet they sit there enticing me with their colors and I have to remind myself every time that I hate them. They're symbolic of the evils of marketing and how it's used to sell things that people don't need and don't even want.
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