#175 - unnatural causes.

as a society, we had to see it coming. we've been living pretty high on the hog for a while now, allowing our hedonistic, caffeinated alcoholic beverage-swilling ways to control our actions, but our collective national wild ride has finally come to an end. as of today, after five years on the market, the manufactured nectar of life known as four loko is officially GONE from the shelves of bodegas & convenient stores across the country. back on nov 16th, in anticipation of a government ruling, phusion products, the makers of four loko, announced that they were going to reformulate their beverages & remove the caffeine. the very next day, the FDA ordered four loko & three other manufacturers of caffeinated alcoholic beverages to pull their products from shelves by today's date, as the caffeine in them was ruled an "unsafe food additive."

the story of what happened to four loko & how we got to this point has already been wolf blitzered to death, so i won't get into it too much except to say that everything was all kool & the gang with caffeinated alcoholic beverages until college students started showing up in the emergency room because the caffeine in four loko had masked the effects of the alcohol & they'd gotten TOTALLY BLITZED. surprise surprise...college students abusing alcohol. way to bunghole it up for the rest of us, you silly, sex-crazed undergrads. now we'll have to mix red bull into our vodkas to get our fill of caffeinated alcohol. thanks but no thanks. i'd rather punch myself in the face repeatedly.

i guess i should just shut my piehole & be thankful that our nation is now safe from the horrors of four loko. i mean, if not for the FDA, we americans would be out of control, consuming all sorts of wacky shit that we really shouldn't be. without the guvment stepping in to protect us from evil foodstuffs, this holiday season we'd all be sitting down to a dinner of shark fin soup, fugu, ortolan & bbq horse roast with a tall glass of creamtastic raw milk to wash it all down. once our bellies were filled with these banned foods, we'd have a slice of mangosteen pie & kick back with an after-dinner glass of absinthe. it'd be the BESTEST HOLIDAY EVER, but there'd be an outside chance that we'd be poisoned or get trichinosis or have our heads swimming with satan-tinged hallucinations or something. that'd suck the fun right out of our holiday festivities.

ok, i have to come straight with you. up until last night, i'd never even tried a four loko. i had no desire too, really. between my exclusion of caffeine, the fact that when it comes to drinking i'm rarely in it for the getting drunk part & the sheer vileness of the product, it was the last beverage on my radar...until all the controversy happened. then i was all "oh. is that what those ugly-ass cans clogging up the beer section are all about?" when it comes down to it, i LOVE controversy like a hobo likes his sweet sweet fortified wine, so i decided that on RIP four loko eve, i would give four loko a shot & let it pass my lips & penetrate my organs. when last night finally arrived, the anticipation was KILLING me. i just hoped that the four loko wouldn't actually kill me.

snack: herr's heinz ketchup potato chips
drink: cranberry lemonade four loko

in celebration of things that probably should not be, i decided to bring in herr's heinz ketchup potato chips as the snack portion of my experimental four loko journey. in an amazing merging of forces, herr's paired up with heinz, the makers of america's favorite ketchup®, to create what has to be seen as the ketchup chip. as the herr's website notes, their heinz ketchup chips contain essential nutrients such as vitamin C and potassium. basically, if you eat an entire 3.75 oz bag of them, you'll get a whopping 40% of the RDA for vitamin C. go nutrition! but seriously, touting the nutritional benefits of the ketchup chip is akin to ronald reagan suggesting that ketchup is a vegetable. i don't know who herr's thinks they're kidding. not this snacker. that's for sure.

although they're seemingly unnatural, they're pretty damn tasty. when you get a good one, one that's covered in a lovely shade of ketchup-red powder, it's like a flavor explosion. the seasoning's made with ingredients like tomato powder & sodium acetate (which gives them a vinegary taste) & that combo successfully gives the chips the taste of ketchup. it's sweet & vinegary but there's something weird about the overall flavor, something that i just can't put my finger on. although i enjoyed them, they got overwhelming after a while & i really can't see myself getting them again any time soon. still, if you come across a bag i'd recommend giving them a try. if nothing, you'd at least join the proud ranks of folks who can definitively say "ketchup chips? yeah, i've had em. they're kind of weird."

as of last night, the bodega just around the corner from my apartment was fully stocked with all the four loko a desperate nyu student could ever ask for. we're talking bounties of all eight luscious flavors--uva berry, fruit punch & everything in between. they all come in cans that are an obvious nod to skidz, which is sort of cool. i picked up one of the fruit punch & one of the cranberry lemonade, but in the end i only tried the cranberry lemonade one. for starters, it sounded like the more exotic of the two & i LOVE exotic, so it won out over the plain jane fruit punch one. the four loko website warns that with the cranberry lemonade flavor "you better keep an eye out for this lemon gone loko!" WATCH OUT! THAT LEMON IS LO-KO! it also notes that the cranberry lemonade flavor "ain't no red headed step child." i don't care whose child it is & what color hair it has, but the owner of said child should really should really brush up on their use of compound words.

just before a friend & i sat down for the dexter season finale, i poured us each a fancy wine glass (about 1/3 of the can each) of the four loko. we toasted & each took a sip. for my friend, it was the only sip she would take, as she almost immediately declared it "undrinkable." i soldiered on, giving myself an opportunity to experience all the finer points of the beverage & firmly establish that it tastes like a merging of boone's farm, mad dog 20/20 & cough syrup. i suppose there was some cranberry & lemonade in it as well, but it was quite irrelevant. within fifteen minutes of finishing my glass, i could feel its loko magic coursing through my veins, leaving me slightly buzzed & slightly amped.  i didn't go back for more though. a third of a can is equivalent to one beer & one cup of coffee & while more than one beer is ok with me, when that beer tastes like evil & comes with caffeine, it's not worth it, even for blog purposes. kudos, FDA. as far as eat!drink!snack! goes...BAN APPROVED! good riddance, four loko.