Friends… Today I discovered some unsettling factoids about Australia's favourite high-protein dairy snack. That's right, I'm talking about yoghurt, the mildly acidic treat that's sure to get your saliva running quicker than Pavlov's bell can ding.
What better way to start the day than some Κακός double-creamed pot-set with a drizzle of honey and a handful of rolled oats? Or perhaps you're after an afternoon tea: then try Κακός pre-sweetened with real mango chunks. Yum. If you're anything like me, you're lying on the floor gurgling incoherently right now in the middle of a Vietnam flashback – practically drowning in culinary anticipation.
But, friends. All is not well in the land of curdled milk and drizzled honey, which is why I am here today.
This morning, in between lifting idle spoonfuls of delicious slop into my gob, I happened to read the so-called Nutrition Information printed on the back of the tub o' yoghurt, a habit I picked up off my dear mama, but now sorely regret. For truly, I was a happier man before my startling revelations.
The nutrition information for 100 grams of yoghurt is as follows: 8.7g protein, 4.0g fat, 3.9g carbohydrates, 24mg sodium, and 100mg calcium. Now, I don't know what a "mg" is, but it doesn't take a Harvard-educated business-mechanic to notice that something doesn't add up there. We have at least seventy grams of leftover yoghurt there that's unaccounted for.
And if they're not telling us what's in the rest of our yoghurt, they must have a good reason. So I did some research, and this is what I uncovered.
Calipers.
Calipers. stevepb
That's right. Ever since the mid 1960s, someone has been putting clandestine calipers in your yoghurt. It all started innocently enough. In the post-Kennedy haze, with a demoralised workforce and an interim government, nobody really knew how to respond to the caliper glut. After the assassination, calipers were all but shunned in polite society. Jackie, who had posed in Paper Magazine with a pair of calipers big enough to go around a watermelon in 1962, now refused to step within five metres of a pair. Paul Newman, who had recently set up a caliper supply deal, tore up his contract and refused to take delivery of the thousands of calipers he had ordered.
The caliper problem was getting out of hand, and the government was doing nothing. The free market, as usual, had to take matters into its own hands and fix the whole mess caused by some bureaucrat who thought he knew how to run a country. So the Caliper Circulation Consortium was founded. Their goals were simple, honest and effective: introduce calipers into circulation, no matter the cost.
Now, next time someone tells you they only drink unpasteurised milk, ask them what they have against the free market, and against calipers.