Fake Food

Losing Touch with Reality at the Breakfast Table

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Column (1977-ish)

The stuff that masquerades for food in this wonderful world of plastic is enough to—shall I say it—choke a horse. It seems that the guy who can pronounce his breakfast deserves a prize. How do you take your coffee? Black, or with a little corn syrup solids, hydrogenated vegetable fat, sodium caseinate, mono and diglycerides, potassium phosphate, lecithin, calcium phosphate artificial color and flavor? That’s the sinister makings of the powdered substance mysteriously called “coffee whitener.” For some reason, just those two words are awfully suspect. They always call up, for me, the image of laundry. Would that stuff do a good job on my sheets? Who dares ask what kind of a job it does on one’s innards?

Unlike the prophets of doom, I don’t worry about it. I just wonder about it. I even eat some of those luncheon meats that all taste alike when you close your eyes so you can’t see their different shapes and shades of pink. About every six months, I sneak a box of Pop Tarts (I eat them very fast and practically all at once so I don’t notice what I’m doing). I may even sprinkle my coffee with the powdered plastic derivative described above. But one thing I will never do again is make Toll House cookies with imitation chocolate bits. They are just plain bad, big B, little A, little D. A crime against chocolate.

The fake-food phenomenon is a puzzlement. Should I be happy or horrified about the unpronounceable things I eat? Notice I do not call it food. I am just not sure about that either. Is it cause for gloom or glee that I can, if I choose, produce an all-ersatz breakfast? If not frightening, it’s at least fascinating. Try this menu. It’s all supposed to taste real. And to stretch a point, the ingredients are real, in the sense that they are not imaginary. But the gnawing question is, real what?

First, a glass of Tang, which is not orange juice, but tastes vaguely like it. Followed by scrambled EggBeaters and imitation breakfast strips, instant coffee with white stuff and Sweet & Low, toasted fluffy white bread with all the goodies removed and chemicals and enrichers pumped in and spread with margarine. A person can lose touch with reality right there at the breakfast table.

The traditionalists among us will be relieved to know that as of this writing, there is no known facsimile of a half-grapefruit, either in production or on the drawing board.

Our food tour today ends in the Real World, with a recipe for an all-real, completely pronounceable breakfast staple. The ingredients are as easy to say as they are to eat.

Amie’s Headnote

As a concept, granola has been around for more than 150 years. Way back in 1863, Dr. James Caleb Jackson created the first granola, called granula, by smushing up graham flour and baking it.

Here’s our favorite granola recipe, always enjoyed from bowl to belly, along with a pair of bonus treats: Granola Protein Bars and Granola Crisps.

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illustration by my mom, Karyl Bannister

HARVARD GRANOLA

Makes 18 cups

• 9 c. rolled oats

• ¾ c. bran

• ½ c. shredded coconut

• ¾ c. wheat germ

• 1 c. chopped peanuts, walnuts or almonds

• 1 ½ c. sesame seeds

• ¾ c. oil

• ¾ c. honey

• ¾ c. peanut butter

• 1 ½ T. vanilla (yes, a TABLESPOON, we’re making a big batch here, people)

In large bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Heat oil, honey, peanut butter together to blend and melt, stir in vanilla. Add to dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Bake in shallow pans or cookie sheets at 375 for 15-25 min, stirring frequently.

Store in covered containers in refrigerator; freezes nicely.

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Amie’s Endnotes

As far as fake food goes, here’s a secret: I’ve always been a Pop Tarts fan, but I’m truly astonished to discover that my mother—the champion of whole grains and garden-fresh vegetables, the woman who would not allow sugared cereal or cartoons in the house because one rotted my teeth and the other, my brain—my mother ate entire boxes of Pop Tarts behind my back?

And like my mom, I was also obsessed with Tang as a kid, which I snuck at various friends’ houses after school, because, although apparently acceptable to write about, it was another banned substance in our house. Or was my mother secretly doing Tang shooters when I wasn’t looking?

Tang, evidently a gateway drug, led to my long-time TAB addiction. This beverage assuredly checks all the boxes for unidentifiable, beyond-artificial ingredients and I am still mourning its demise.

Snapped a few years ago, before TAB was completely discontinued in 2020. As if we need another reason to hate that year.

I can’t tell you why this recipe is called “Harvard” Granola; Mom carried that secret to the grave. But I can tell you that making this, after all my non-baking years, transported me to the little island kitchen, the whole house fragranced with peanuts and coconut and honey and I remembered—little girl me remembered how a fresh batch of granola turned the milk in the bowl as sepia-toned as the memories of baking with my mother.

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