By the year 2050, America will subsist entirely on a diet of gummies.
I just returned from the wholesale club. I bought some vitamins and things and it was an interesting experience. I take a multi-vitamin, which some claim is really unnecessary. I also take a probiotic on the advice of my doctor, as it supposedly helps with digestive problems. There are a host of vitamins on the rack at the store - for every ailment, real or imagined.
And most of them are gummies.
In fact, it is getting harder to find "pills" anymore. Multivitamins are almost exclusively offered as gummies now. Sure, you can get a "pill" vitamin, but it costs more - often double the gummie price. And I'm cheap (you read the name of the blog, right?) so I go with the lowest priced vitamin, gummie or not.
But everything else is a gummie, too. Probiotics, Vitamin-C, Vitamin B-12 - you name it! Chances are, whatever supplement you want to take, it is offered as a gummie, and since the gummie price is half that of the pill price, you end up buying the gummie.
And let's not even talk about chewables - the Fred Flintstone vitamin of my youth has gone mainstream!
I digress a bit, but I was never a big fan of gummie candies, either. I never understood the appeal of "Swedish Fish" or gummie worms or sour gummies or whatever. But then again, that crap all came out by the time I was 30 or so, when one's tastes migrate from sweet to savory (or should, sadly it seems an entire generation is stuck on sweet) and thus my candy consumption, which probably peaked at age 10, was nearly nil by the time gummies hit the market.
So, what's wrong with this? A number of things. The first and most obvious is that making medicine into candy is risky, if you have small children around. Kids have been hospitalized after breaking into Mom's gummie stash. It gets worse - other kids have found Mom and Dad's THC gummies or brownies and gotten into similar trouble.
There is really no reason to disguise medicine as candy - it is just asking for trouble!
But on another note, it seems like another example of the infantalization of our country. We are all big, goofy kids these days, wearing clothes that we wore during the summer between third grade and fourth - big shorts, sneakers, and a t-shirt. Heck, back then, you'd be sent home from school for wearing clothes like that. Today, we wear them in the boardroom. Times have changed, our generation won.
Previous generations didn't have the luxury of being silly all the time.
Food is no better. Fast-food has replaced cuisine, with many upscale restaurants offering burgers, "sliders" and various finger-foods. Utensils are no longer provided as a matter of course, unless you order something from the big-kids menu. But even then, it is mostly high-carb pasta dishes and whatnot. Save room for dessert! We eat as though we were at a 6-year-old's birthday party! Cake, candy, ice cream, burgers, hot dogs, fries, and soda-pop - that is the new American diet.
So gummie medicine is right in line with the rest of our behavior.
And speaking of behavior, the temper-tantrum is the "in" thing to do. Whether flying on an airplane, or being served in a store or restaurant, throwing down a fit and "asking to speak to the manager" is the new normal - if you don't just punch someone in the face! And if that isn't enough, you can go back to your car and get your toy gun and go bang-bang! That will show them! Mean old Judge might give you a "time out" however. But don't worry too much, your NRA Daddy will bail you out - and you might actually go Scott-free (well, it appears to be going that way in two recently publicized trials, anyway).
Scott-free - is that a politically incorrect racist jibe against Scottish people? Or is it like the N-word, and I can say it, having (allegedly) Scottish heritage? I just don't know anymore - the world seems a crazy place these days.
But then again, it is a place I will occupy for maybe another two decades, if I am lucky. Others will have to endure it for far longer - so it is their world now. And maybe gummies are their "thing" and that's just peachy for them. And until I shuffle off the mortal coil, I guess I can endure eating candy with my breakfast. But I don't have to like it!
Maybe if the Corona Virus Vaccine was a gummie, there would be fewer problems with people refusing to take it. But then again, it appears that the vaccine refuseniks are actually a very small portion of the population. A loudmouth portion, to be sure (and with CoVid deaths, a shrinking portion!) . A portion the click-bait media loves to report on, to be sure. But a small portion nevertheless!