State of Food

One of those fluff pieces that our lamestream media insert into online content to balance out the death, destruction and general asshattery of our elected official buffoons that chokes out our eyeballs like cholesterol in a fat guy’s aorta are common. One such “article” piqued my interest – Official State foods.

At first glance, official state foods seem odd. Then again, states have flags, mottoes, birds and other objects that represent each state’s awesomehood. For example, I think the state bird of Louisiana is the mosquito. I could be wrong.

After more research, I noticed that there’s a lot of disorganization and foolishness going on. This is all true, of course, because I found this on the internet.

Southerners seem to like categorization. North Carolina has an official state blue berry (blueberries) and red berry (strawberry).

I guess opponents on both sides of the debate are now happy.

Overlap is also common. Alabama claims the pecan as their state nut and the peach as the state fruit. Then Georgia goes and also claims the peach as the state fruit, and throws in the Vidalia onion as the state vegetable. Seems a cage fight here is in order.

There should be one fruit per state, like California, whose state fruit is Richard Simmons.

Illinois lists a snack food – popcorn. I imagine they munch on that shit while watching their politicians go on trial and then off to jail while the highway funds remain unaccounted for. Then again, that’s better than watching Honey Boo Boo. Popcorn is still a better snack food than Utah’s, which is Jell-O.

Who the fuck eats Jell-O as a snack, really?

Kentucky has only one entry: the blackberry as the state fruit. Of course, their unofficial state plant is marijuana (Google that shit), but then maybe that makes it a vegetable. Nobody will care after a while, so it’s all good. Of note, Hawaii doesn’t bother with any of this business, which is the unspoken claim to better weed than Kentucky’s. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Tennessee claims only one as well – the tomato as the state fruit. At least they know tomatoes are fruits.

Maine lists Moxie as their state soft drink, which I’m told is essentially maple syrup soda. Texas should list Lone Star as theirs but they only bother to officialze some chiles and list chips and salsa as their snack food, and have a bunch of other forgettable categories.

New Hampshire claims the pumpkin as the state fruit and the potato as the state vegetable. Odd, since the state has the highest per capita consumption of beer and ice cream of any other. Not a lot of them are fat, which makes sense when you consider they shiver off the calories during their August through June winters.

What is most amazing about all of this? Easy: that while important business like budgets and state employee laws inch through state legislatures, politicians snatch the low-hanging fruit – if you’ll allow a play on words – to appear useful. I don’t care because I have blueberry muffins and ice cream to eat here. However, consider this: not one state lists bacon as an official food.