They Melt in Your Mouth, and In Your Conscience

I’m trying to lose weight. Not that you can tell. But I can. At work, over the long and lonely nights that are the “Sunrise Shift” atop the 25th floor of an empty office tower, the vending machines call to me. “Come….” They say, “behold our wares, taste of us, we are sugar.”

I try to resist. But at 4:15 am, trying to stay awake while editing legal documents, a tempting way to revive oneself (albeit temporarily) is the loud crunch in ones own ear of the beloved M&M.
Always peanut. Never chocolate.
Chocolate is too sweet, too easy, too…junior for my adult palatte.
Only the slightly larger, almost imperceptibly varied curvatures of the peanut buried beneath the factory-glazed coating can satisfy a discerning landscape of sugar-enhanced tastebuds waiting for a flavor journey.

The outer coating strikes like glass at first, and to the first-taster, it must seem like he’s about to eat rocks. Then the thin layer of not-too-much-milk-chocolate gives way to the yielding flesh of the peanut that has nested there, fresh as the sun-baked Georgia soil where nature’s tender rays brought it to fruition.

The crack/yield/flesh is too much for just one M&M. Oh no! You must have more. And therein comes the genius that is dieting on these rainbow’s end of indulgent would-be waist-busting beauties. They come in very small bags. Bags that cost almost a dollar each. One bag is enough to satisfy my eternal craving for crunchy and salty and sweet all rolled into a shell of hardened candy goodness without having to resist a tray of say…cookies. But don’t get me started on those.

For now, take up my battle cry of M&M! America’s Next Subway Diet. The US Solution to the Biggest Loser Desert Plan. And if the little marbles of mmm never make it past the vending machine front-lines of sugar-satieting service, then perhaps their modest placement in the pantheon of national sweet-n-savory snacks is right where they belong. May they never go the way of Bacon Thins, Mother’s glazed animal cookies, or (gasp) the cheap but oh-so-satisfying Marathon bar. Indeed, may it be M&Ms that last a long, long, long, long time.