Chocolate flavoured chocolate reminds me of real chocolate

Chocolate flavoured chocolate reminds me of real chocolate. Likewise, butter flavoured popcorn reminds me of real butter. The world is a self-replicating mystery.

The reason nothing is genuine anymore is that artificial flavours make more money, naturally. They offer a more consistent and predictable taste profile compared to real ingredients, which can vary depending on growing conditions, ripeness and harvest time.

That’s the official excuse. The other one is that real flavour, from real plants and stuff, just tends to go bad. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere.

The lesson is that beautiful and authentic things are delicate and stay with us for a limited time. So love them now, because they may be gone tomorrow.

On the other hand, to decipher this new world order, of replication and appropriation, it helps if you at least remember the genuine item, and how it was. Someday everyone will have forgotten.

How can you know how bad rubbish is, if you never tasted the good stuff in the first place?