Cognitive Dissonance In The Snack Food Aisle

The other day I went grocery shopping and my head exploded.

One of the first things you see on walking into my neighborhood Publix, right after you pass the seasonal display in the front, is a row of two-for-one bins. Crackers, mayonnaise, canned soups, and, today, chocolate chip cookies. Buy one, get one free. There's a variety available: chewy, white chocolate chunk, peanut butter, original. I examined a package more closely.

"REAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES!!!" it declares.

Well, yeah. I don't see why that's worth stating, much less bragging about. Of course the package contains real chocolate chip cookies. If it were full of mousetraps, or geraniums, or something, it would probably state as such, too. But the implication is -- there are FAKE chocolate chip cookies out there, just waiting to tempt the witless, innocent cookie consumer. These are REAL, much better than those FAKE ones.

In the right hand corner of the package is a smiling chocolate chip cookie, replete with eyes and chocolatey eyebrows.

That cookie is obviously a fake.

So to advertise the realness of their chocolate chip cookies, the manufacturers have chosen a fake cookie. And they then thought it necessary to reassure them that the cookies were, in fact, real.

I think I may have drooled a bit, then.

I stood there stunned as an ox for a couple of beats.

And yes, then I bought the goddamned cookies. Two packages. They aren't very good, but they are indisputably real.