Re: Häagen-Dazs®

Dear Mrs. and Mr. Mattus,

This blog entry originally started out as a love letter to Häagen-Dazs® Baileys® Irish Cream Ice Cream, the love of my taste buds' life. But as I started writing it, and it did come easy, I decided that perhaps instead I should be writing a thank you letter to the Häagen-Dazs family for creating this ice cream that I love so much. I proceeded by first researching this wonderful Scandinavian family. If you are reading this, Mrs. and Mr. Mattus, I am sure you know where the rest of this letter is going, but I would like to spell it out for you anyway.

First off, I found that Häagen-Dazs is not a Scandinavian family name. Nor is it two hyphenated Scandinavian family names. Häagen and Dazs are actually two made up words that just look Scandinavian (to everyone except for Scandinavians, who just assume they must be German). I read this, and thought to myself: 'Hmm. Maybe the actual Scandinavian family behind Häagen-Dazs® just wanted to make up an original company name instead of using their own last name. I can understand that.' But at that point a spark of doubt formed in my head and I decided to research further, just in case anything else was not what it seemed. Guess what I found out.

Häagen-Dazs® ice cream was created by a Polish-American family from the Bronx of New York and is produced in North America. In fact, absolutely nothing about Häagen-Dazs® has anything to do with Scandinavia.

What the hell?

I have been eating this magnificent combination of deliciousness, filled with 250 calories per half a cup (minimal possible ingestion at one sitting being four times that), telling myself that 'It's ok. I can eat these Scandinavian calories; they are foreign, so it's like being on vacation. Everyone needs a vacation!'

Ignorance was beautiful beautiful bliss. But now that reality has hit I know that I have been consuming American ice cream calories all this time, a lot of them. Apparently what I thought was a semi-liquid vacation, turned out to be a trap. A delicious American-fat-ass-making trap. Furthermore, since I have been consuming this frozen once-upon-a-time-a-vacation-recently-discovered-trap for so long, I cannot even stop myself from future consumption; although your product is not physically addictive, it certainly is emotionally. I have been tricked, and now I am stuck.

So thank you, Mrs. and Mr. Mattus, for creating this bliss-destroying lie. Perhaps next time you should conceal it a little better.

Driven (and now also Sad)