Pre and ProBiotics?!

I've had my ear to the ground for a while, just soaking in all the "Healthy" "Bio" "Vitality" "Plus" food commercials on television. It must be some of that lingering run off of the baby boomers, but please, I see the word healthy, and I hear tasteless. I think maybe I am supposed to be buying into these commercials... nope... not quite working... sorry.

"Singles" chocolate bars and those mini 100 calorie cans of pop. For the 30 something women that these products are trying to appeal to, I have 2 words-- Self Control. I know the companies are still trying to make money while the witch hunt scrambles for another enemy in the post Super Size Me world of healthier ways of doing as little as possible to get fed. I know companies are lowering those net weights and raising those prices as the healthy alternative to the Mr. 2 Big chocolate bars.

Even the Mr. 2 Big bars have gotten smaller, I remember buying one from my buddies little sister as part of a fund raiser and that chocolate bar being as long as my arm. Now they are just barely more than a Mr. Big from 7 years ago. As packages get smaller and inflation becomes greater the only people who are getting hosed are the chumps that are willing to pay 50% more for 30% of the original product.

Here is where the whole healthy foods thing takes its unexpected turn for me personally. I am a big fan of yogurt. Always have been, of course if someone would have told me it was healthy when I was younger I may not have, but anyways. I like yogurt. I read in a David Suzuki book a long time ago that there are good bacteria in yogurt, and cheeses, and cottage cheese, sour cream and such. But thats what we called them. Good Bacterias. As a kid I considered myself a conqueror of worlds with every spoonfull of living organisms. They were just little squiggly guys with sour looks on their faces.
Then this commercial comes along, I cant remember which brand of fad yogurt it was. (Trail Mix of the Double Ots) But there it was, "Now with PROBIOTIC cultures", probiotics something that I knew was in the yogurt all along was fatefully discovered by marketing relations and branded Probiotic to make it sound scientifically infused, this term preferred over the older, less appealing, "good bacteria". Then I see another commercial, and this one has been nagging on my brain for some time. 2 thirtysomethings standing in their posh yoga clothes and the girl in yellow mentions that not only does Yoplait YO+ have Probiotic (Good bacterium) but also prebiotic cultures... PRE?! wha? pre usually means before. So this yogurt, to put in terms everyone can understand... including me. contains material that will become life, like a primordial ooze, or possibly eggs? Wait a minute, didn't I see this episode of Futurama? Where fry eats the egg salad sandwhich out of the truckstop bathroom? And then all the parasites take over his body...