Thursday, July 13, 2023

The Violence Of Popcorn

 


I’ve just been doing a doodle to celebrate National popcorn day (see above) and while doing a little research I made a horrifying discovery. Popcorn might be the most violent and disturbing snack in the world. While it’s very tasty, and one of the most versatile sacks out there, it has a very violent birth and destruction. It even looks like it’s in totally agony when it’s sitting in a bowl. After looking at close up pictures of popcorn, and then drawing my doodle, I was a little horrified.

I guess while it’s corn it’s not that violent a life, although I know almost nothing about the harvest and production of popcorn. Come to think of it, a tour of a popcorn farm and factory might be fun. I’ll be sure to put that on my list of future adventures. The thing about popcorn is the first thing people do to it is put it in a really hot environment until it explodes. However popcorn is designed not to explode all the way.

Instead, popcorn is designed to almost pause in time, at that moment after exploding, but before it splits apart into millions of pieces. This is likely why I feel like popcorn looks like it’s in agony. It looks like the slow motion close up on a villains face during the climax of an action movie. Twisted in a way that looks impossible. Then, after you’ve frozen your popcorn in the middle of a large explosion, you often pour hot oil (or sometimes molten sugar) on it. It’s final demise is when it’ finally crushed in your mouth.

If I was to ever write a movie about the life of a kernel of popcorn, people would find it super disturbing. It would be interesting to make that movie as the people likely to be watching it would actually be eating popcorn at the time.

CC

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