Meijer and the TMI scale

if you recall, I nearly Southern-Belle swooned upon seeing the new digital produce scales with accompanying sleek and silent label makers. #verklempt

being a Meijer customer since 1996 (yep, that's the year we moved to Michigan, 20 years! wait, where's my anniversary cake?!), I knew that "coming soon" in Meijer speak translated to, "eh, check back in about 3 weeks."

"coming soon" just couldn't come soon enough for me, and yet... it did!

5 weeks later...



isn't it beautiful? those are my apples, wrapped in noisy cellophane, sitting on a super high-tech stainless steel scale, with a legible label and upc code that the u-scan wouldn't dare reject and or give me computer-voice attitude.

I stood with hand over happy-thumping heart and reveled in the glory of the digital-scale. #herbivoreomnivorevictory 

go ahead, zoom in on the pic, look at that color screen giving the exact weight and subsequent price-- even the tares! no idea what a "tare" is or why I should care, but if someday I took the time to google it, I'm sure I would (maybe) learn to care. 

scan over to the right side of the screen, see the "Nutrition Facts" table? you thought that table was only for containers of yogurt, or jars of pickled beets, or bags of Doritos, but no(!) clearly, fruit and vegetables have nutritional information too! who knew? 

for instance, good news, a medium apple (1 serving) has no:
fat
cholesterol
sodium
or... protein 

hmm. hang on... 

but it does have: 
22 g of carbs 
16 g of sugar(?!) 

*Atkins gulp*

suddenly, I find myself questioning my abiding love for the Honeycrisp. my eyes leave the so-called "Nutrition Facts," hoping to unsee the troubling truth. 

my optic orbs search for refuge, or at least a distraction, at the "Description" title-- alas, more "information": 

apples are members of the rose family?! that's as earth shattering as the day I found out bananas went extinct in 1950 and now we eat cloned bananas! if that doesn't knock your yellow socks off, here's another fun banana fact--technically they're also herbs. 

there are 7000 apple varieties? I only can list off six, maybe seven varieties--has my life up to this point been an apple mockery? will I ever experience the other 6,993 apples?

apples float because 25% of their volume is air? math, and liquid displacement, isn't necessarily a pet interest of mine, so I let this one pass with a, "huh." #movingon

what really rocked my world was the bold "Storage" title. not ever have I refrigerated an apple. and that's the apple that broke my factoid back.

"TMI." I whisper.

I snatch my labeled bag of Honeycrisps (aka 66 g of carbs & 48 g of sugar roses) off the scale. a tinge of unease that the Scale of Too Much Information has tainted my go-to lunch bag fruit. 

and yet, even in that moment... I couldn't wait to see what the TMI scale had to say about brussels sprouts. #blechh