The Undying Sandwich

My food is zombie food.
   And I don't mean food for zombies, I mean the food is a zombie. It'll never get moldy, never get stale, never go bad. It'll never die.
   I was talking to a friend today and I told her that back over Christmas - when I had two weeks off - I noticed one day that I had about 1/3 of a loaf of bread on the counter. Which got me to thinking: 'how long has it been since I've made a sandwich?' So I picked up the loaf and looked at the expiration date.
   Three weeks before.
   Time was, if I picked up a three-week old loaf of bread, especially here in San Antonio, it would have long since turned into a science experiment. I can't count the number of times I had to throw out half a loaf or more because it had started growing colonies of the newest form of penicillin. But not now. This loaf was soft, spongy, and growth-free. Pretty much like it had been when I bought it. A month before.*
   In the words of my Texas brethren: that ain't right.
   Bread goes stale. It gets hard. Or it gets mold. Or first one then the other. It does not, under any circumstances, remain 'edible' for a month at a time. That crap I had on the counter wasn't bread at all, it was preservatives swaddled in a brown dough wrapper. I mean, seriously, think about it, what kind of vile, terrible chemicals does HEB put in their bread to make it shelf-stable for 3 to 4 times longer than nature intended? Because when I eat that bread I'm also eating that preservative. And evidently a LOT of it.
   It's just gross. Really, really, really, really gross. I thought things were bad ten years ago, but manufacturers still keep screwing with our food. You want to know why Americans are fat, diabetic hogs? Don't blame Paula Deen - not too much anyway - blame the people who put never-stale bread on our shelves.
   Despite my years living in SoCal, I am not some hemp-wearing hippy. But when I'm faced with a chemical stew masquerading as lunch, it makes me want to hug a tree. And then punch the son of a bitch who made that loaf of bread.


* a week before expiry and three weeks after