Henrietta Hay's Column

The other morning it took me five minutes to open a box of cornflakes. Now I think that is unreasonable. It is easier to open the trunk of a car than to get into a breakfast food package. And most of us are not at our physical or mental best at the time of day when we are wrestling with this problem. At other times the same problem exists with crackers and cookies and other goodies.

The methods used to seal food products to "protect freshness" go, I think, too far. There needs to be a compromise between a sanitary product which we all want, and ease of access--between what the manufacturer thinks we want in packaging and what we can handle. Think of all the money they spend on market research. Do the researchers ever eat breakfast?

I'd better put a disclaimer in here. "Do not eat this food if the seal is broken. It may be hazardous to your health." I am very happy to see plastic seals on aspirin and mayonnaise and catsup bottles. One quick flick with a knife and they're off. I am also happy to see breakfast food sealed, but must they use the same adhesive they use to bold rockets together?

When I was a kid everything from meat to dirty books was wrapped in plain old paper, boxes were made out of cardboard, and plastic had never been heard of. It was rather convenient, but on the other hand, people had not been killed because products they trusted had been tampered with. We had not heard of creeps injecting poison into capsules and putting them back on the shelf. We lived in a much safer world.

Today perhaps the most important kitchen appliances are the can opener, the kitchen scissors and the screwdriver. I have, on occasion, tried using both a can opener and a screwdriver on sealed plastic bags, but plain old scissors seem to work better. To tackle those seals with one's bare hands is to court disaster. And before you get to the plastic, you have to fight your way into the box. Some boxes have tabs, which are fairly easy to handle if you have no respect for your fingernails. But the ones that say, "Push here and pull back," require stricter measures. This is where you need the screwdriver.

When you get into the packaging of non-food items, the situation often gets explosive. One day my friend the philosopher, who was not being very philosophical, was trying to open a box of soap powder. She had tried everything but a hammer, and finally in desperation banged it on the corner of a table. It opened! An hour later she had most of the powder out of her hair and the curtains and the centerpiece and was starting on the floor.

Sally Forth's daughter Hillary brings up another point. As she starts to open a box of crackers on the "wrong" end, her mother says, "The Company wants you to open the other end." Hillary makes quite a speech about democracy and announces that "Okay, but when I get older I'm going to open whichever end I want." It is my opinion that the inside package is equally inaccessible from either end and I say, "Go, Hillary."

There is one brand of cookies, which I especially like. It even furnishes a twist tape to re-close the package. The problem is that by the time I have wrestled my way into the package, it is too torn to tape!

And then there is the matter of buying packaged food. We are all familiar with the aisle where the breakfast cereal is displayed. In my favorite store it is three quarters of a mile long. Occasionally when I am not in a hurry and can step around the children, I have "browsed" that aisle. The Mesa County Public Library has nothing to match it. I even discovered that the sugary pops and smacks and loops and rings and stars are at all right at a child's eye level. The all-grains and raisin oat bran are on the top shelves. Who says merchandising doesn't pay?

Then there is the size of the packages. My cupboards have a finite height. Most of the packages have an infinite height. So the two do not match and I have to figure out where to store the stuff. I have boxes stashed away where I will probably never find them again.

Oh well, I guess it is not a problem on a level with the national debt, but I do wish it were easier to get breakfast.