Information...

As Number 6 said: ‘What do you want?’ And as Number 2 replied: ‘Information.’

Okay, so that has got the tenuous link out of the way. Seriously though, Information; there seems to be so much of it around these days and I’m not just talking about Google and all those social networking sites.

I was munching away at a packet of crisps last week and, having a few lost moments as I often do, found myself rather compulsively reading the blurb on the packet. I suppose you could call it a cereal moment, a bit like a senior moment but a little more surreal. That moment when you realise that you are finding the back of the cornflakes box really interesting and simultaneously also realise that, for you, all is lost.

Anyway, back to my crisp packet.

I was pleased to find that my crisps were made from 100% British potatoes and to be honest that would have been good enough for me. But reading on I found out that they were also naturally lower in saturates probably due to the sunseed oil (sunseed oil… Just what is that then?) that they were probably cooked in. I say probably because nowhere did it say for definite that they were cooked in this patented oil with a name that implies it’s made from the seeds of the sun, but I think it a reasonable assumption.

Reading on, I have to admit to being a teensy bit interested in the fact that my crisps had no artificial colours or preservatives, and the implication that the ‘Delicious Seasonings’ used gave them the same great delicious flavour. In this case the ‘delicious seasoning’ was salt. Of course, I had no idea what my crisps would have tasted like before, but I expect it was salt that gave them the old delicious flavour which was now the same albeit a new delicious flavour called salt.

I read the marketing bit written by a chap who must have been in the potato groove thang, or at the very least down with the potato kids in the hood, because he used words like ‘spud’ and ‘top taters’. Apparently if my crisps weren’t perfect then all I had to do was to return them (with the bag) to Walkers (other crisp manufacturers are available). To help me do this, should I wish to return them, there was a PO Box address, two free phone numbers, a web site, and even a facebook page. Not that it mattered, my crisps were fine.

The typical nutritional values were a bit dry for me, but I glanced at them anyway. As usual salt was kept to a minimum and saturated fat (we used to call it lard) almost non existent - all part of the government plot that demands that we are all healthy. In fact, rather disappointingly, the crisps contained nothing more that potatoes, sunflower oil and a tiny bit of salt – no preservatives, colouring, drugs; not even a bit of horse. Mind you it did warn me that the factory that made my crisps also handles: milk, wheat, gluten, barley, soya, celery and mustard. But as I don’t have any allergies, don’t know what MSG is, and am not vegetarian I didn’t really care.

I was advised to keep my crisps in a cool, dry place. Luckily my hand wasn’t hot and it wasn’t raining. So that was all right then and I didn’t plan on keeping them for long. My single pack of crisps contained 9% of my calories, 1% of my sugar, 11.1% of my fat, 8% of my salt and a measly 4% of my saturates; and there was I thinking crisps were bad for me. Bad for me? After reading that lot my crisps seemed to be more like a health food than a sin against the diet police.

My crisps were environmentally aware and working with the Carbon Trust to ‘further reduce’ their carbon footprint. Oddly though, my crisps produced 80g of carbon, almost three times the weight of the crisps in the packet. Mind you, they were packaged in a protective atmosphere; which made me wonder what they needed to be protected from.

Finally I noticed a picture of a hopping man dropping a shuttle cock into a plastic laundry bin whilst trying to avoid toppling into it. The image made me subliminally aware that I should dispose of my crisp packet thoughtfully. So rather than drop it on the floor I folded it and placed it in my pocket.

And of course none of this affected my statutory rights.

Yes, I'm not a number I'm a free man.

Cue the opening music...