As everybody who has traveled on a plane before knows, as you sit in your vegetative state in your awkwardly cushioned seat, you eventually become ravenously hungry. Your body aches for the familiar, a snack, something that can comfort you as you you cruise at 30,000 feet in a pressurized cabin among fat farting old men and screaming babies. You try to sleep, shake your bodily instincts and clamor into a short hibernation state to no avail because sadly you are intermittently interrupted. Right as you start hitting some quality REM’s comes the inevitable, “Excuse me… Sir EXCUSE ME! Do you want a beverage?”
You almost laugh. This is the kind of shit the Japanese would do in WWII, breaking you down slowly until you are so sleep deprived that you almost want to drop kick the attendants head or throw the plastic cup she is shoving in your face across the cabin like a lunatic.
And WHERE are the f-cking snacks anyways? You must have boarded about three hours ago. Do they recognize that most American’s indulge in a meal during the middle part of the day called lunch?
All you want are those peanuts, 10 or 12 grams of hearty protein packed in a tidy self contained plastic encasement. Ever since you found out you were a celiac last year you have had to ignore the little pretzel bag, but luckily God hath invented peanuts, those delectable things that can be so easily transported and so efficiently preserved in any situation.
You fall, disoriented, into a shallow asleep once more, your spine compressing and head kind of floundering around without a secure place to put it until once again you are roused awake. “Would you like some pretzels or peanuts dear?” You look up with those heavy bloodshot eyes, almost happy to see that ugly fake blond beehive hairdo and red lipstick that has rubbed off menacingly onto her front teeth.
“Yes, the peanuts, I’ll take two.”
You take a napkin and engage the seat-back table in front of you. You have an annoying urge to pee, the aftermath of the four glasses of water the attendant felt so inclined to wake you up for, but you ignore it. You feel giddy, like a child unwrapping their newly purchased candy as you rip open the small airline engraved package in front of you. It’s not much, maybe a quarter-cup of peanuts in each small parcel, but you are satisfied, it will get you through the flight and you can go on with your life, vacation etc.
Just as you lift one small first nut to your greedy mouth, you hesitate, place it back onto the napkin and just to be safe, begin scouring the small red wrapper for the ingredient list. This last year of gluten-free avoidance has weathered you into a nutritional fact-checking animal, and you make sure to always double check to avoid the stomach aches, digestive issues and ruined workouts that inevitably follow “contamination”. Still, it’s just a bag of peanuts, so the ritual goes on only out of habit, because undoubtedly these must only contain salt and maybe a vegetable oil, Right?
WRONG. It’s staring at you, the second ingredient in small almost illegible black letters: Unbleached Wheat Flour.
WORD UP AMERICAN AIRLINES STOP PUTTING WHEAT ON THE NUTS! It just doesn’t make sense. Wheat flour isn’t even a preservative, it’s an allergen obviously, and I don’t have any friends that eat it for a snack. Only when people start lapping up gluten flour like Fun Dips will I credit your stupid mistake of a serving choice. Here is to your obvious disregard of 18 million Americans that SUFFER from gluten intolerance.
Next time I’m in your cramped plane bathroom I’m going to derail the smoke detector AND throw paper towels down the toilet! When you tell me to put on my seat belt I’ll refuse, and I’ll continue to use as much data as I can on my iPhone even as we just begin to ascend. I hate you United, I hate you Southwest, hate to Delta and American Airlines, hate to all of you, for your outward ignorance and bitter acrimony. I hope some poor celiac falls fatally ill from your contaminated peanuts and you are sued to bankruptcy. Until you change your ways when it comes to peanuts served onboard, you will never have my respect.
naturesalute 