Ron Sparks Author, Poet

The Crap We Learned to Eat

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I just took a few minutes during my lunch hour to stumble the Internet. I stumbled on a fantastic website filled with advertisements from the 1950’s – the era in which my parents grew up. I was engrossed – I love the innocence of the time. The optimism that was pervasive in every ad made my smile and I was nostalgic for an age in which I didn’t live.

Still, it wasn’t all motherhood ad apple pie; I stumbled on this ad for Hunt’s Ketchup and was mortified by what I saw.


What the hell is that thing? Grilled cheese, topped with cheese, topped with bacon and ketchup? With pickles on the side?

This must have been a fairly common dish for it to have been highlighted in an ad. Yuck. We wonder why America is an obese nation. It started in the 1950’s with food like this. Out parents taught us to eat like this. The sudden and ubiquitous presence of pre-packaged or easy-to-make meals led to a sharp decline in healthy eating habits.

I don’t even want to know what this is – looks like stuffing as the main course of a meal:

Personally, I despise ketchup and I find people who slather it on everything to reside somewhere between Neanderthal and chimpanzee on the “Culinary Pallet Evolutionary Scale”, but the point here is what in the hell were we putting ketchup ON in the 1950’s? And why did we put pickles on the side with every dish?

About the author

Ron Sparks

Ron Sparks is a technology professional, science fiction and fantasy author and poet living in Zurich, Switzerland. His latest book "ONI: Satellite Earth Series Book 1" is available on Amazon.com.

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  • That stuff on the second picture is corned beef hash next to some cole slaw. Nice little piece of writing and remember in the end what we eat is just as much discipline and passion.Matthew Boles—

Ron Sparks Author, Poet

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Ron Sparks

Ron Sparks is a technology professional, science fiction and fantasy author and poet living in Zurich, Switzerland. His latest book "ONI: Satellite Earth Series Book 1" is available on Amazon.com.

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A man of many passions, I lay claim to a myriad of interests and hobbies. Among them, I am an amateur astronomer, an avid motorcycle rider, a whiskey aficionado, a (poor) surfer, a scuba diver, a martial artist, a student of philosophy, a proponent of critical thinking, a technologist, an entrepreneur, a cancer survivor, and I harbor a lifelong love of science fiction and fantasy. Feel free to strike up a conversation on the social networks below.

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