TOO HEALTHY FOR WORDS

I know this guy who said he started taking gingko biloba to improve his
memory.

"The problem was," he said, "I kept forgetting to take it."

I believe it. You'd need three or four memories if you wanted to recall and
take all the herbal elixirs suddenly available to jack up everything from
your metabolism to your spirits. Not long ago, if your mood began to sag,
you might impulse pop a few M&Ms and your morale would stiffen, if only
temporarily.

Now, between the Ginseng gum, PMS tea and bottles of St. John's wort
promising more healthful vigour with one swipe to the scanner, it's a
wonder we're not all in a very centred road company of Up With People.

But look at all these products that sound either like Brazilian dance bands
or like they should be next to Mummy Dust on Merlin's shelf. You may decide
that if you do buy into yet another supposed remedy that actually does
nothing for you, you'll still feel depressed, and stupid to boot, and
there's no cure for that. It's enough to make you get the M&Ms and forget
it. Comfort food is simple and much cheaper.

Eating makes most of us feel better and most of us don't forget to do it.
(Well, some people say they forget to eat, but as someone who has often
forgotten to stop, I pretend these people don't exist.) At any rate,
eating, especially eating potato chips, is comfort in itself but now
there's a guy that wants not only to comfort you, but to make you serene,
smarter and have a longer life through chip binging.

The guy is Robert Ehrlich and, with the help of a shrink, a zen master and
a focus group, he's marketing "Robert's American Gourmet" snacks that
contain healing herbs.

Kava Corn Chips are already out, and Cardio Chips, to improve your overall
health so that you can live to buy lots more of them, are on the way.

Then there are Personality Puffs. Packed with the rich, tasty goodness of
St. John's Wort and gingko biloba, they are shaped like little people, and
eating people is bound to make you feel better. Especially if you bite
their little heads off. But if eating potato chips gave you personality,
I'd have had my one-woman show on Broadway that would run from now 'til the
end of the world.

According to an Associated Press story, many in the medical field are
dubious of sanity through snacking, with one professor comparing the chips
to "penicillin pie." Also, in order to get one daily dose of St. John's
wort, you'd have to eat six bags, which would come to 5,040 calories a day
in chips alone.

In order to work off all that happiness, you'd have to be on the
Stairmaster 10 hours a day which means you'd lose your job, which is bound
to depress you all over again, not to mention thwart your ability to buy
chips.

And if you didn't do that workout, well I don't care if you marinate
yourself in St. John's wort or anything else belonging to St. John for that
matter, earning the nickname "lardass" is going to bring you right back
down again.

We got one of the few remaining bags of Ehrlich's Gingko Biloba Rings at
the market and tested them at the perfect time, being ravenous. The onion-y
taste was like a low-fat version of Funyans (in other words, like Funyans
if they weren't that good) and after about an hour was asked by an editor
if I felt any smarter.

"I said something really good to a friend in the car," I told him, but no
matter how hard I squinted I couldn't recall this glistening pearl of
wisdom. It took me three hours to remember what I had thought was so damn
witty, which seemed, if anything, a little poorer recall than usual.

So the gingko biloba rings didn't hurt, but they didn't seem to help much
either. And then, too, I'm more the kind of person who would like to dull
the day's events with a couple of beers, not the kind to want to bring them
into sharper focus with salty, reedy herb-dusted snack foods.

Having your brain chemistry altered by potato chips seems a little weird,
but chemically enhancing the things we consume goes on all the time. Water
is fluoridated. Cows are shot up with growth hormones so you can get a
bigger steak.

As long as they're cramming meds into our food, though, why not put some
real pharmaceuticals in instead of dusting a few potato chips with some
dippy New Age herbs? Why not some Prozac Pop-Tarts so that those who begin
the day staring into the dull meaningless void of a godless existence can
cheer the hell up while enjoying a brightly decorated frosting shellac?

Why not Darvocet Ding-Dongs, packed full of wholesome tranquilizers, not to
mention a slight chocolate high? How about some King Ritalin cereal,
because what do hyperactive kids need with vitamins anyway?

And if they really want us to get a potato chip glow, there's already a
perfect brand to stick some Rufinol and Viagra into. What else but Lay's?

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski