The Next Big Scare Jul 26 '06    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Movies Under the Tuscan Sun From $9 Casablanca From $3 The Bottom Line Oh, because every so often, we get a rather ridiculous media scare regarding our health. How about the most ridiculous of them all? So I had this piece of writing floating around (posted at my livejournal account and being saved in a folder with my other pieces of writing). Anyway, I've been looking to share it, so here it is: THE NEXT BIG SCARE. Carbs scared people. Cholesterol scared people. Saturated fat and really, really hot coffee scared people. But nothing, nothing compares to TRACE AMOUNTS OF ARSENIC THAT CANNOT BE FILTERED OUT OF FOOD OR DRINKS TO BEGIN WITH. Stay tuned. And watch for gratuitous pop culture references and what could possibly be a sharp tangent near the end of my... ummm... story. -------- I can see it now. 2010... some unemployed forty-something who resides in one of those midwest states that kids usually forget on geography quizzes is running low on money from his last lawsuit and decides to sue Pepsi Cola after mysteriously falling ill. Doctors will trace the cause back to the bottle of Aquafina he drank that morning after diagnosing the patient. Top Harvard scientists will leap on the study, of course, unbeknownst to the media at this point since the latest news craze is celebrity darling Mary Kate Olsen-Cruise-Lohan-Durst's latest wedding/publicity stunt. Then the Harvard scientists finally find out why the unemployed forty-something from whatever state fell ill- -and then the FDA announces that all foods and drinks contain a trace amount of arsenic. Once the media teaches the American population what arsenic is, the country is thrown into widespread panic. The next great lawsuit flood begins. Carbs are in- arsenic is out. McDonald's introduces its arsenic-free menu after Morgan Spurlock releases his second documentary, "Oh, Just Poison Me", in which he eats nothing but McDonald's for a month and experiences painful flatulence. Meanwhile, the Dixie Chicks announce that George W. Bush is the one who put arsenic in all foods and drinks back in 1999 as part of a conspiracy to win the 2000 election. Alec Baldwin and other celebrities all agree. Soon, college students protest Bush and his evil ways. It seems everyone agrees with these crazy celebrities. Then, everyone who filed a lawsuit against any food or beverage makers gets their compensation, and the food companies are forced to put the following FDA-mandated warning on everything they produce: "Warning- This product contains trace amounts of arsenic. Consume at your own risk." Soon enough, this warning appears in big, black lettering as mandated by the FDA. People are still suing, however, so then the FDA mandates that this warning must appear a minimum of five times per package. Packaging must be made bigger to compensate, and then contents proportionally decrease to balance out production costs. But new-wave hippies in the Northeast and California decide to ban packaged food all together- even trail mix, in hopes of avoiding trace amounts of arsenic in their diets. They eat nothing but tree bark and grass until they realize they're destroying the environment. Then they eat nothing at all and starve to death. Former president George W. Bush is then blamed for the death of ten thousand hippies, and for the melting of the ice caps. The 2010s then go on to be known as completely indistinguishable from the 2000s, except for the fact that top Harvard scientists resurrect John Lennon and George Harrison, and the Beatles get back together to rule the world.

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