By Simon Li, Jonah Ruddock, Eric Yang
Pictured from right to left: Jonah “The Devil” Ruddock, Eric “quaggy” Yang, and Simon “4” Li
The school store is an integral part of East’s culture, and although many students purchase food and drinks from it daily, no one has ever before conducted an objective and thorough analysis of the store’s bountiful fare. On December 1st, we purchased one of every snack and beverage available and ranked them according to value and quality. It was an experience that has left us fundamentally altered, both physically and spiritually. We have braved unspeakable things for the sake of science. We faced these eldritch horrors in order to bring truth to the common man at East.
Our panelists are the renowned food scholar and massive internet sensation Eric Yang (creator of Gumpshroom Gambling), major school store benefactor Simon “4” Li, and Jonah Ruddock.
Value has been calculated by rating over cost (from one to ten) to calculate how many value points you get for each cent you spend. For example, a score of .01 on a 1 dollar item would mean you got .01 points for each cent, adding up to a rating of 1 overall. For the purposes of this article, all value scores will be rounded to three decimal places. To counteract skew in the data, we have taken the median of the values, as the median is immune to skewed distributions.
Salts
Is cheese salty? Those destined for the fiery pits of damnation may try to tell you so. In case any of you twisted hooligans were looking for cheese in this section, we will kindly point you toward the refrigerated foods section, where cheese is rightly listed.
What exactly are salts? According to the council, things not explicitly “chips” deserved their own category of school store itemization–things such as popcorn, salted cashews, and Chex Mix. The full list of which can be found on the Google sheet.
As usual, the snacks in this category vastly underperformed their hype.
While the Smartfood White Cheddar Popcorn seems to have performed well, receiving an okay rating of .06, the council agreed that the popcorn was “not so good” and that the cheese “felt unnecessary.” Simon, voicing the majority opinion, had this to say on the Smartfood white cheddar debacle: “Worse than usual popcorn.”
Its distinct cousin, Pirates Booty, fared an even worse fate, receiving a not-so-good score of .04. Simon again voiced the majority opinion, describing the taste of the cheese puff as tasting like a “pirates booty.” Nobody wanted him to elaborate.
Out of the Chex Mix flavors, the council agreed that the Savory Chex Mix and the Cheddar Chex Mix performed the best, with an overall value of .08 and .053 respectively. Jonah, the Pie Stealer, commented that the Savory Chex Mix “tasted like instant ramen” (maybe because both contain MSG–a popular savory additive to foods). The Classic Chex Mix came in alongside its brothers, with a hot .053. However, many members noted that it was “forgettable” and that it tasted “bland.”
The cashews were the epitome of goodness and pleasure. Heaven on earth. Beauty incarnate. Absolutely exquisite. We searched hard for flaws and found none. (“It didn’t have enough salt,” Simon the ignorant complained, blind to the fact that the bounty of mother nature is far beyond petty “enrichment” by ground up sea rocks.)
To finish the salt section off, we have two classic American snacks–goldfish and Mini Pretzels. The goldfish had an unanimous disapproval from the council, with noted “4” enthusiast Simon Li saying that it “was really dry and gets stuck in teeth,” but the Mini Pretzels sparked some controversy; Jonah simply said that they were “amazing,” while Eric argued that “they’re literally just pretzels…1 out of 10.” Eric disapproved of them for their lack of innovation and excitement, while Jonah saw them as a simple job well done. In philosophy, we call this Jonah and Eric’s Question: Is it better to appreciate the ordinary or strive for perfection and overachievement?
Granola Bars
The granola bars were largely unremarkable, most of them scoring within the .01 – .05 range. I (Eric Yang) would describe them as, and you may quote me on this, “mid”.
To start off, the Nutrigrain bars (both strawberry and apple cinnamon) were strongly disliked, with mostly everyone agreeing that it was a bad bread-to-juice ratio.
Nature Valley Granola Bars: Are they the food of the gods? According to us, absolutely not. At the time of our review, we could only get our thirty eager digits on two Nature Valley Granola Bars: Sweet and Salty Nut and Protein Peanut Butter. The Sweet and Salty Nut, despite its weird flavor combination, came in at a surprisingly high point value of .053, with multiple commentators saying that “they would eat this.” However, its unloved sibling, the Protein Peanut Butter, received a dismal .02 (it cost extra too).
After tasting the Nature Valley Protein Peanut Butter, Jonah stated, “See, they say this includes protein, but I have never felt less inclined to exercise than I do right now.” Simon added very little to the discussion, calling the bar “very proteiny.”
The Chewy Granola Bars fared a much better fate, with two out of its three kin receiving a score of .053 (Chewy Dark Chocolate and Normal Chewy). However, the Peanut Butter Chocolate bar fell apart under intense scrutiny from the council, running away in tears after only seconds of harsh, unrelenting criticism. Jonah, the most vocal out of the three, berated the poor bar, saying “people are always putting peanut butter where it doesn’t belong”, with the entire council nodding in unison.
Moving on to the Belvita. It was so bad that all three council members started to spontaneously gag and choke on the…grains? Oats? Textured cracker? Its only saving grace was that it gave the impression of being nutritious, although we could not find any evidence to support this. In fact, some studies suggest that a daily Belvita can lead to the appearance of ring worms in the tongue.
Sweets (Who doesn’t love sweets? These monsters, apparently)
We all know double-stuffed oreos sound deceptively good in theory. But when applied in a practical sense, throwing off the bread-to-juice ratio is a big mistake. The end product was far too sugary to enjoy. Similarly, dousing a normal oreo with sickeningly sweet “white fudge” was an even worse mistake–not only did it taste too sweet, the flavors did not lend to each other well.
While at first good, the Welches’ gummies proved to be a slow-acting poison, at least according to the personal experiences of Simon Li. Reliving his past memories of downing 40 packs of these gummies in an hour, the haunted consumer (while staring into the distance with a dead look in his eyes) shared, “They get overpowering after you eat a lot of them.” However, if you are intent on buying the poison, buy the small pack for a dollar. The large packs were exactly four times less worth your money (.04 vs .16).
Rice Krispies proved to be a truly mediocre snack, with quaggy Yang coming up with an incredibly insightful and radical interpretation: the Rice Krispies were “average.” Furthermore, Li agreed with this radical take, adding that it was “too sweet for me, but I do like the crunch.” On top of all of this radicality, Ruddock chimed in with a play from the left field, saying that “[the Rice Krispies] would be amazing if they were a little less sweet.”
What can we say about the classic American snack, the Poptart? A lot, apparently. While Jonah was raving about the Poptart’s genius and creativity and showering it with praise (while frothing at the mouth), Eric commented that it was quite “dry” and that the “frosting to actual stuff ratio is bad.” Again, the fundamental difference between our council members can be seen at this moment. Our data reflects Eric’s thirst for thrill, with the poptarts scoring a measly .03. The final interpretation, however, we leave to you, the reader.
Little Bites Muffins, according to www.littlebites.com, are the “Perfect Portion Of Happiness.” The company even added a bozo of a cartoon dog to entice little children, or clueless high schoolers, into buying their product. One might expect them to be actually a “Perfect Portion Of Happiness” as advertised, but the council immediately noticed that the muffins were quite moist and unpleasant. According to Eric, it “gave him bad memories”, something that I don’t quite think anyone wants. Maybe that’s just Eric, though.
Finally, to finish off our review of the sweets, we tried, tested, terrified, tailored, tutored, tabulated, and tolerated the Milano cookies. The council tried to be generous here, actively looking for any points that it could award this snack. The expectations were high here. The council was aflutter with “these ones are good” and “Wow! Really good.” Unfortunately, after refreshing his memory, Eric immediately disapproved, saying “eating these again, I hate them.” Jonah acquiesced after diligently tasting the cookie, looking around at the spectators, looking back at Eric, and finally formulating his train of thought, saying: “They have a weird aftertaste.”
All in all, we advise the East population to stay away from the sweets in the school store. Not only do they not taste good, their mostly exorbitant costs will scam you out of your (or your parents’) hard earned bread.
Unfortunately, due to the sheer length of this article, we have made the executive decision to split up the review into three parts, so stay tuned for the next issue of the East Side News.
Lastly, for the second time, we would like to thank our crew members: Daren Liu, Ben Keim, Aditya Gupta, Pen Fang, Sophie Zhu, Thomas Jordanov, Mathew Li, Mr. Huber (who had the misfortune of witnessing Jonah drink a combination of five different drinks through a green sea salt veggie straw), and the poor soul working at the school store between 12 to 3 pm on December 1st, 2021.
