Synaptic Sugar

Actress Isabella Rossellini recently wrote, directed and starred in a number of shorts for Sundance Channel describing mating processes in insects and various invertebrates. The series is called “Green Porno”; here’s a trailer. On first impression one might comment with “WTF?”, but if one has the patience to watch the trailer multiple times, his or her opinion is likely to change to “Huh?”.

We went to our usual Target store today and bought, among other things, a bottle of margarita lite mix that appears to be part of a new Target designer collection called “Whim by Cynthia Rowley” (label pictured). It further appears that Ms. Cynthia Rowley, fashion designer defined on the Target website as a “busy mom”, has placed her name on a variety of summer-inspired products such as picnicware, partyware and beachware, that will be available for a limited time only. All good so far; what we didn’t notice, when we first picked the bottle up, was the little warning stamped on the lower left corner of the label. If you can’t make it out in the picture to the left, here’s a magnified version that should help.

“WARNING: This product contains bromate, known to the state of California to cause cancer.” Ahhh, sounds delicious, doesn’t it? Must be a boon to sales and a real killer at parties (or a few years after drinking it at those parties). First of all let me say I’m thankful for Californian laws that force the disclosure of such “details” (hence the warning), or I doubt we would even know at this point. A quick search on Wikipedia shows that a bromate is, in fact, a chemical compound that is a suspected carcinogen whose mere presence induced Coca Cola to recall its Dasani water products from the UK in 2004, and further pushed the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to discard 600 million gallons of water from the Silver Lake and Elysian reservoirs between 2007 and 2008.

I don’t know if Ms. Rowley was aware of the issue before she decided to endorse these products, but I don’t really care; I’m sure, on the other hand, that Target must be quite aware of this, as they’ve happily put their brand on this new collection and distribute it on their own (as the label clearly specifies). This strikes me as odd in itself, as I was under the impression that Target products were at least a little better than this; it also makes me wonder how many other food products, whether in this collection or not, contain similar tasty treats. Either way, Target generally allows customers 90 days to return products they’re dissatisfied with, and it definitely won’t take us that long to return this party margarita mix. Cancer may be fashionable, but over here we’re simple people, nostalgic and attached to long-time classics such as trying to stay alive and healthy.

Edited on May 26 at 3:50 PM to add: After we e-mailed Target about our dissatisfaction with the product, they promptly apologized and sent us two $3.00 coupons as a reimbursement. While that’s appreciated, it is as of yet unclear whether they’re going to re-examine the product in question or not.