Artificial?

One of the many things that people seem to be amateurishly fascinated with decrying is "artificial" food additives, preservatives, colors, flavors, etc. In the U.S. colors are often specified in the form of "D&C Red #40" or "D&C Yellow #2". Preservatives and other additives are usually spelled out in all their chemical glory -- monosodium glutamate, thiamin monoitrate, etc.

If you read the ingredients on a product in Sweden, these additives are listed with E-numbers. I'm not sure what the E stands for, although the best guess is always Europe or European, as many standards are today set on that level. People love to hate the E-numbers. Look at all the artificial crap in the food we eat! There's an E-something in almost everything in my cupboard. No wonder we're all fat and sick!

Now, I'm not saying I was ever on this bandwagon, and in fact I mostly figured that people who don't like "all these E-ämnen" could start eating some fresh fruit and vegetables and stop bitching, so don't get the impression that I had a life-changing revelation while looking at my marmelade this morning. But it definitely gave me a quandry. I noticed that there were two E-additivess in my red onion cumberland: E162 and E440. In the Swedish ingredients, that is. But right after Swedish, the ingredients were listed in German or Dutch, and there were no E-numbers listed at all. In their place I read bietenrood and pektin. When I looked up E162 and E440 at Livsmedelverket's website, I saw that my super German-or-Dutch sleuthing skills did not fail me -- E162 is juice from red beets and E440 is pectin.

So, if I understand correctly the urgings of all the people who decry the E-additives (all while happily eating Cheet-os and Billy's pizza and such), I'm supposed to be upset about my food containing beetroot juice and a natural extract from fruit that our great-grannies used to thicken their homemade jams?

Okay, so one part of this doesn't shock me. That is, the fact that people out there might complain about how many "artificial" additives there are in their food while all the while continuing to eat all of it, that doesn't shock me. Especially in this country, where so many are more likely to see it as the government's responsibility to pass laws (all problems are solved by passing laws) that require food companies to stop using additives, rather than seeing it as their own responsibility to choose foods without these additives if they're so keen on not taking them in. It doesn't surprise me, either, that most of them are unaware that many of these E-additives can also be found naturally in a banana or a glass of tap water. I also get that some of these E-additives sound very scary. Looking at the list, I see that E513 is svavelsyra (sulfuric acid). I guess surströmming has to be made out of something...

No, what does surprise me is that they are written this way in the ingredients. I understand why a bag of Cheet-os in the U.S. lists riboflavin and thiamin monoitrate in the ingredients instead of vitamins B1 and B2. We thank those regulations that keep laymen from thinking, "Awesome, Cheet-os have vitamins!" and instead list such nutrition facts in their own little box. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why it is better for the consumer to write E162 instead of beetroot juice. Wouldn't we want people to know that what they're eating is actually made from stuff that grows out of the ground? Or do we want to force vegetarians or people with this or that allergy to look up and memorize which E-codes go along with foods they shouldn't eat? What's worse, the E-code isn't always legally required, but can be replaced by the "function name" of the additives. Instead of writing E440, for instead, it's acceptable to write förtjockningsmedel (thickener). But again, if I'm a vegetarian, I would very much appreciate knowing if that thickener is gelatin or pectin, wouldn't I? Or in my case, sötningsmedel (sweetener) is a thought-provoker, as I get migraines from aspartame but not from other artificial sweeteners. At least if they wrote E951 I would learn to recognize it, by why not just write aspartame?

It just all strikes me as ridiculous given that ingredients are listed on food products for the purpose of keeping the consumer informed, probably prompted by such things as allergies or moral convictions or the like, the exact kinds of goals that make the ingredients list pointless if it is obfuscated with a bunch of numbers and vague category names that all mean wink wink, nudge nudge, we squeezed a beet into your jam.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to pack up and head to Karlstad, where I will be participating in the ritual intake of cambaridae and the acidified and coagulated results of a bacterial process performed on bovine lactate, but choosing not to join in the imbibing of distilled grain extract.

Puzzling

Addictive: http://www.puzzles.com/projects/LogicProblems.html .

Stand-in

By now I'm sure everyone has read about how the little Chinese girl who sang while the Chinese flag was marched in during the Olympic opening ceremonies was actually lip-syncing. Here you have the news from Dagens Nyheter and here you have it from CNN.

The actual, and amazing, 7-year old singer Yang Peiyi apparently wasn't cute enough. She had a "round face" and "uneven teeth" (so very shocking for a 7-year old!). The lip-syncer was deemed to have the properly cutesy appearance. According to the musical director, and I'm translating from the Swedish article, "The reason that Yang couldn't be seen was that we wanted to project the right image. We were acting in the nation's best interests."

Well, I'd say we got the right image, alright, but whether or not it was in the nation's best interests is debatable.

Punk

I must heartiliy apologize to anyone reading this for the fact that I haven't written anything for a while. I'm feeling so very punk that I'm learning a new meaning of punk. I've been like this for a week and the upcoming week doesn't promise to be any better.

As is often the case, Fredrik is feeling the same way. Misery loves company, and we do an increasingly better job of being sick at the same time. What's more, it has rained here every day for the last two weeks, and that shows no signs of stopping, either. My normal strategy of trying to get a little bit of exercise when I'm sick so that it doesn't become a vicious cycle has been completely thwarted by the constant cats-and-dogs, and the vicious cycle is officially here. I am alternating between the bed and the couch.

But what I can't complain about is the vivid dreams I've been having lately. Last night there was one that somehow involved me both living and working in a huge shopping-mall-type complex that also seemed to be the last stop on some sort of subway/monorail system. On the day played out in the dream, the train driver overshot the end of the track three times, the last time completely demolishing some sort of Mrs. Field's-type cookie shop. I had some very cross words with the train driver, telling him that it wasn't going to look good at his upcoming performance review and that Martinis before lunch weren't a good idea.

In fact, the whole layout of the mall/office in my dream looked an awful lot like the Mall of America, where there was, if my memory served me correctly, a cookie shop across from the Orange Julius in the bit of 2nd floor East Broadway that overlooked the amusement park. I had to surf to their website to confirm that my memory served me correctly. It did. (The cookie shop is called the Nestlé Toll House Café.) Are we frightened that I remember exact locations of shops that I never even patronized in the largest mall in the U.S.? No, we're not, because everyone needs a talent.

I noticed on their website that the amusement park, which was originally called Camp Snoopy, is now called Nickelodeon Universe, and it's a foamy Spongebob Squarepants instead of a foamy Charlie Brown running rampant inside. Not that Charlie Brown probably ever "runs rampant," perhaps that was the reason they ditched that particular hometown hero. Peanuts: just not ADD enough for modern America.

Heartbreak

I hang out at a forum for women who have experienced late miscarriages, multiple miscarriages or stillbirths. There are several women there who are pregnant now, and we chat back and forth about how it's going for them, grilling them intensely to make sure they're doing alright, because that makes us feel that we're going to be alright, too.

One of the ladies found out at a scan this morning that her little baby is not alive. She was more than halfway through her pregnancy, and it's her second late loss in a row.

I'm heartbroken for her. I wish she could go to sleep and have the pain and the loss be gone when she wakes up, realize that it was just a terrible dream. Sadly, I know it will likely be the other way around -- each morning she will slowly remember what a few hours of sleep and dreams allowed her to temporarily forget.

There isn't much I can say, either to her or about her. I can just say that I'm so very sorry.

Incompetence, part 2

Försäkringskassan continues to push the limits of how many amateur mistakes they can make in the realm of getting a piece of paper from one place to another.

The guy who is in charge of my case called me and said that he had received a copy of my employment contract but had not received the registration form.

I mentioned that I had sent the two in the same envelope.

I was told to send it again, and -- that's right -- to yet another new address.

During the conversation he was looking at my file in the population database (folkbokföringsregister) and said "Really, since you're a citizen, this isn't going to be a problem or anything."

Isn't it??

I've already been trying to get myself registered with you people for over two months. And what you're saying is that all the info that I've filled out on the registration form -- name, address, personal identification number, and that I'm a Swedish citizen -- is already right in front of your face on your computer screen...

No, I'm sure it will be no problem. I mean, seriously, what could go wrong?

Disorder

Small bits of disorder in daily life make me grind my teeth. I don't like for things to be slightly broken, slightly dirty, slightly out of order, etc. Better for there not to be a single clean glass in the kitchen and a layer of mold growing on top of the standing water in the sink than for there to be a little spot of tomato sauce drying on the counter.

Today it was high time to give the house a good thorough cleaning. After I vacuumed the bedroom, I went to pull the plug for the vacuum cleaner out of the wall. To my surprise, the entire outlet followed along with it, which also ripped a bit of wallpaper away from the wall.

Now, just to be clear, we live in an almost brand-new house. We moved in last April before the paint was dry. This means that most everything else is the house is still shiny and there are even parts that still smell of fresh carpentry.

So I sat tranfixed on the floor, staring at this outlet, calling for Fredrik to come look at it immediately. After he tried to shove it back in and determined that it hadn't seemed to be screwed to anything, but rather just sort of resting in the little plastic eldosa thing (sorry, svengelska), he said he'd call the builders tomorrow.

Now, this is perfectly reasonable. The fact that we live in a nearly brand-new house does, technically, make the whole thing easier. We just call the builders and mention that our outlets seem to be held in place by a mixture of friction and faith that seems to be wearing quite thin and ask them to fix it. But I'm not quite patient enough for that. I imagine my eyes glazed over as I sat there on the floor, with tunnel vision for this tiny bit of chaos, and I was honestly considering starting to growl menacingly at it.

This is when it became clear that Fredrik is fully aware of many aspects of my OCD-lite or whatever it is. He's seen how I reacted to the grease stain on the wallpaper next to the dishwasher (not that anyone ever looks down there anyway), or how I spent a whole New Year's Eve snapping at my friends because a little piece of plastic broke off of our stove when we took the food out of the oven (it was replaced by our landlord as soon as we called, as the plastic bit had long since been recalled by Electrolux and replaced by a metal bit). He held out his hand to help me up and suggested we leave the room and play a board game.

If I have to have near-crippling psychological quirks, it's at least nice to know that I'm loved enough that someone understands them so well. Happy anniversary, Fredrik.