Last Supper

In preparation for the experiment beginning tomorrow, I have been ridding my apartment of unacceptable foods. I was surprised to find I had less actual junk food than one might think, but discovered some of my so-called healthy favorites had too many sugars and chemicals to stay. My Lean Cuisine chicken meals barely made the cutoff (although I won’t be buying any more over the next month), but the beef meals were loaded with lots of things I couldn’t pronounce. The barbecue dinners I get sometimes seemed pretty safe (pork or chicken with cole slaw and a baked potato on the side), but I looked at the packets of barbecue sauce they hand out and found the numbers one and four ingredients are sugar and corn syrup, respectively. My peanut butter has both partially and fully hydrogenated oils and each of my applesauce cups had at least two types of sugar, except the ones with no sugar added which just taste nasty. They’re gone. Also out is four boxes of Jell-O (sugar suspended in gelatin) and three boxes of pudding (basically milk-based Jell-O), and a ton of unfinished sodas – I tend to stock up when they’re on sale. My jug of cranberry juice cocktail contains only natural fruit juices so it stays. So does my only can of hot tamales, which surprisingly has no sugars, oils, or preservatives of any kind.

Anyway, it’s time for the condemned to get his last meal. I wanted to incorporate everything I won’t be eating over the next month so I thought of a sugar-coated ball of lard, but I’m not in the mood for an Otis Spunkmeyer muffin. Then I considered McDonald’s, but they gave me the perfect sendoff for lunch last Friday (nasty food, incorrect order, and shorting me on ketchup). I think tonight will have to be Taco Hell, a place I haven’t been to in about a year. There’s something fitting and poetic about a meal comprised of tacos that each cost less than a can of Alpo.