Junk food

Scene from a Houston grocery store, courtesy of a touring author's life. I did not buy any of these things.

Junk food, grocery store, Houston, TX, USA

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Food • houston • not food • obesity • tx • wide

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nixiebunny

Look at those banana twins! Just look at them!
- strangefriend
  
  Cloud Cakes !!!??
  WHERE is this grocery? I”M IN HOUSTON & NEED TO KNOW!
  - http://monolithcreative.com thekinginyellow
    
    i would say it looks like randall’s. i can’t think of anyone else with those big yellow tags. maybe they all do!
http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux

And that’s just the Little Debbie section.
- mappo
  
  I was just thinking, “and that’s not even the good junk food – that’s the junk junk food.”
  - franko
    
    i beg your pardon!
    little debbie donut sticks, and oatmeal cream pies, are AWESOME. that is all.
    - fadetomute
      
      notice, the oatmeal creme pies seem to be selling… .
    - Boundegar
      
      The Nutty Bars are so good, but some of their products just look like garbage.
- Andrew Singleton
  
  And yet no twinkies.
  - kringlebertfistyebuns
    
    Cloud Cakes (center left) are the Little Debbie equivalent of Twinkies.
http://profile.yahoo.com/P3XSJYCWNZY5T2TMYEZSZBP4W4 Andrew

How is this special to Houston?
- http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
  
  It’s where Cory happens to be.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/P3XSJYCWNZY5T2TMYEZSZBP4W4 Andrew
    
    Right, but isn’t picking on Houston on the obesity issue akin to, well…picking on the fat kid? It isn’t as if this is this scene is unique to Houston.
    - Conspirator
      
      From the variety of that selection I’m guessing this is a particularly large grocery store, so there’s no surprise there. Larger grocery stores have larger supplies thus more junk food.
      
      Why not take a comparison shot of the fruits and vegetables? I’ll bet there’s a larger supply and more types than in your typical small town grocery store.
    - dculberson
      
      “picking on Houston?”
      
      What part of the post could possibly be construed as picking on Houston specifically?
      - http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
        
        And for the record, Houston can take it.
      - http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
        
        I’m glad, for one, to see the shoe on the other foot. Through high school, the Arts Magnet kids in Dallas would sneer at us because we were from the suburbs. I figured that was all behind me until I started college, where the Houstonians were top-tier, I mean they thought their shit had no stank. Houston, Houston, Houston! Take that, Houston. Take your Little Debbies and cram ‘em. Sideways.
      - Donald Petersen
        
        I’m a very bad person, I guess, since I always felt that the company motto, “Little Debbie Has A Snack For You”, seemed to be followed by an implied “Heh Heh Heh.”
        
        As if Little Debbie Does Dallas.
      - http://profile.yahoo.com/P3XSJYCWNZY5T2TMYEZSZBP4W4 Andrew
        
        What part of that post was specific about anything? Contextually, it speaks to Houston’s standing as one of the USA’s fattest cites (a distinction I don’t dispute, mind you). I was merely pointing out that the scene above could have any number of US cites stamped on the title and it wouldn’t surprise anyone.
        
        Houston is also home to the Mission Control Center. That is unique to Houston, and something a touring author might also showcase as representative of Houston.
      - http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC
        
        If the touring author happened to visit it. Which, given the kind of schedule publishers can put one on, a touring author may not have time to do. Whereas a touring author still has to find time for the necessities of life, such as food (or toiletries, or biros, or memory sticks, or whatever one might visit a supermarket for while on tour).
- http://twitter.com/chicanorojo Erik Toren
  
  I am guessing Cory has never been to a Wal-Mart or similar. That’s usual junk food items in a grocery store in Anytown, US of A. No grocery stores in Boing Boing land?
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants
    
    Personally, I like the SPAM aisles.
  - Justin J. Snelgrove
    
    As a Canadian, I can sure say that looks disturbing. I mean, our grocery stores have junk food but the bulk of it is things like potato chips, chocolate bars, and cookies. Not that much of those sort of monstrosities.
    - bcsizemo
      
      We have aisles for each of those usually. Chips are with soda/pop/soft drinks, cookies are usually opposite baking products or on the same aisle as crackers, and chocolates are usually somewhat random. Like 25% of what is in a grocery store is junk food, and that’s just counting the stuff that’s actually designed to be loaded with fat and sugar.
  - jellyfibs
    
    The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this pic was a similar view I had when stopping at a Wal-Mart in Nevada on the way to Burning Man a few years ago….
uglyredhonda

Ooh! Hey, Cory – can you grab me a couple of boxes of Apple Delights? They never seem to sell them near me.

/hard to imagine how much “creme” is in this photograph
//5 gallon bucket?
Sam Ley

I like the single bottle of “Performance Drink” hiding amongst the junk food. It almost looks embarrassed to be there, “No really, I’m not junk food, I’m for athletes! Don’t look at how much sugar I have, I’m a performance drink, I don’t belong here, I swear!”
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  I read recently that male guppies deliberately hang out with less-attractive male guppies in hopes of looking better in the eyes of any females that happen by.
  
  That sport drink could be employing that same strategy.
  - http://twitter.com/LeeroyBerlin Leeroy Berlin
    
    Guppies or yuppies?
    - Andrew Singleton
      
      Either?
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

Junk food porn?
http://www.facebook.com/heather.cristofaro Heather Cristofaro

Ok, you showed us the “before” pic, now show the “after”…
Pickleschlitz

Little Debbie! Yum! Yum! That pile of stuff and a few gallons of coffee and I’m ready to go!
http://monolithcreative.com thekinginyellow

welcome to houston. sorry i’m gong to miss you tonight.
schadenfreudisch

when in rome… eat the banana twin. just eat it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

We’ve got Little Debbie cakes in the Portland area, and at one time or another I think I’ve seen most of those, but I’ve never seen this large a variety of them in one place.

Maybe Houston is a more fertile ground for junk food, allowing a more diverse ecosystem?
- IronEdithKidd
  
  I’m in the Detroit area and had the same thought about the…completeness, shall we say, of the selection in Cory’s pic.
  - http://twitter.com/johnclavis John Clavis
    
    At my local Key Food here in Astoria, Queens, NYC, we have a pretty healthy Little Debbie’s section… so I guess the quipsters (that’s short for “Queens hipsters” [I just made that up... and now I taste bile]) like themselves some Little Debbie’s to wash down their hateful coffee drinks!
    - IronEdithKidd
      
      Are you sure they’re not swilling some PBR’s with their snack cakes? That’s how the idiot hipsters roll in these parts. (I say ‘idiot’ because PBR is a headache in a can. I seriously have no idea why anyone would drink it ever unless it was the last so-called ‘beer’ remaining on Earth a la Tallahasee and his Twinkie quest.)
      - wysinwyg
        
        Better than bud light. I’ve never noticed myself to be particularly prone to headaches after drinking PBR in the first place, but hey everyone’s different.
      - IronEdithKidd
        
        Bud light is rice water with a few bubbles and a dash of alcohol. It’s a damned low bar.
http://www.jimdraws.com Thorzdad

LD Oatmeal Creme Pies are pure-guilt childhood manna.
- http://www.facebook.com/dpease Dave Pease
  
  Put them in the freezer. They’re great frozen.
  - LinkMan
    
    That sounds delicious. And it never would have occurred to me. I’ll bet it works great with Fudge Rounds, too….
CrackWilding

No Twinkies. Sad.
- LinkMan
  
  I’m pretty sure Cloud Cakes are the Little Debbie version.
  - Trevour
    
    Indeed, they are. They do the job, in this post-Twinkie world.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  “I’ve got Cloud Cakes kid. If you don’t want ‘em get out of my store.”
http://ok-cleek.com/blogs cleek

i wonder… do they make all that at one bakery (“It’s Cosmic Brownie day!”), or are there multiple LD bakeries out there, each making a subset of similar LD products (the brownie plant, the creme roll plant, etc) ?
- http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
  
  There are multiple bakeries, all these people going on about Oatmeal Creme Pies — but I wonder if they get them from the Collegedale, TN plant? Houston is closer to Gentry, AR which means they are really getting the sub-par product. The Collegedale cakes are still handmade by artisans and are shipped only to discerning metropolises such as Portlandia, Austin, and Hoboken.
SomeGuyNamedMark

The rare and exotic Little Debbies you usually only see in Family Dollar stores
MT_Head

Little Debbie, Little Debbie, I’m-a comin’ on home baby -
’cause you make me want to
Walk like a Camel!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUP5rwVNJko
CSBD

So thats whats at the end of the bread isle at Kroger.
d3matt

Kroger, Walmart, Tom Thumb (Randalls in the Houston area), Albertsons, all have this selection… You didn’t spot the zebra cakes though (my personal favorite)…
Quiet Wyatt

Speaking as a diabetic: Little Debbie is the Devil.
fnc

In my mind the employee who stocked that area left the exactly one half box sized hole in the middle specifically to fuck with an OCD manager.

Also, LD Swiss Rolls are the bomb.
Trevour

Star Crunch were my childhood favorite. The perfect ending to a sack lunch.
axoplasm

Yea ye pharaohs,
let us walk through this barren desert
in search of truth and some pointy boots
and maybe a few snack crackers
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

Thanks, this saves me the trip to any of my own local supermarkets to see what the snack aisle looks like. Like you do.
Peter

Really looks like any grocery store in Texas/Oklahoma we just got Tastykake last year. I love the peanut butter sticks, nutty bars, and the brownies but only the regular ones with walnuts no cosmic brownies for me! Although they all tasted better when I was a kid so it’s probably more nostalgia than anything because I don’t buy them now.
timquinn

Okay, half way point on my jog, just gonna duck in here for a drink. Don’t look at anything at all, just keep your eye on the ground and head for the drink aisle. Okay, got my drink, don’t look at anything. had for the check out, eyes on the ground and . . . what’s this . . . OMG!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1256226228 Freddie Freelance

Those prices are pretty high; I usually buy those exact same products at the Dollar Tree.
Christopher Houser

I’m going to get you, Cory Doctorow! Just 2 hours left. Muahaha.

But first, I need to go by the store and get some junk food…. because I’m a fat Houstonian.
OriGuy

In San Jose, and I suppose in Houston, too, the Mexican supermarkets carry Bimbo brand junk food. One of the varieties is a Twinkies-like product with strawberry filling. Another is a roll with dulce de leche. You can keep your Hostess crap.
pjcamp

I hate to say this but I could snarf a whole entire box of Oatmeal Creme Pies.
oldtaku

Since it’s Texas, was this the ‘Organic Health Food’ section?

Also, winter is definitely the best time to visit Houston. In summer it’s the state’s reeking, dripping, diseased taint. In winter it’s just charmingly dirty.
noah django

yeah, sure thing, Cory. meanwhile, the food in England is world-renowned for it’s taste and nutritive value.
suet |ˈsoōit|
noun
the hard white fat on the kidneys and loins of cattle, sheep, and other animals, used to make foods including puddings, pastry, and mincemeat.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BtrKQqqZL._SL500_SS500_.jpg
http://www.thedieline.com/resource/NEW-PF-Pork-Pie-3D-visual-cropped-small.jpg?fileId=13170708
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6005/5938664364_4682813c48.jpg
http://www.laverstokepark.co.uk/@@content/pub/image_3414/black_pudding_plated_lighter_18104.jpg
http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib/5/media-5738/large.jpg
http://voidstar.com/ jbond

I wonder what the shelf life is on all that stuff. And why.
Steve Miller

Here ya go, Donald.