Say goodbye to a number of food or drink options offered by major brands. Other than Sierra Mist and Anchor Brewing, I don’t think I was even aware the other items existed
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The only one of these that I was familiar with was Anchor Brewing. I think I had one of their beers out in the Pacific NW. It was beer but nothing to look for again.
The one I am familiar with is the Wendy’s grilled chicken. It was available as the sandwich shown, or as a variation of the asiago ranch chicken club, which was really good. The asiago ranch club is still available, but only with deep fried or spicy deep fried, chicken. Instead of the solid grilled chicken breast, they have cubed, grilled chicken. in the wrap the article talks about, and on a couple different salads, which are also very tasty.
Steve
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@steve203 - I forgot, we had a resident Wendy’s expert in our midst 
I guess, … sorry, one or two fewer Wendy’s choices for you
The sandwich was very good, but so is the chicken wrap and the cobb salad, which they added to the menu. The Wendy’s franchises here also offer geezers a free soda. So I can stroll in, have a salad, which is expensive at $9, including tax, and the free soda, and call it a meal. Even better, the local Wendy’s/Tim’s combo isn’t afraid to turn on the heat in the dining room, so it is a nice, warm, place to be on a winter day.
Steve
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This infrequent Wendy’s customer is a Biggie Bag type of person.
On the chicken side, I think I have better options with El Pollo Loco - a Mexican food franchise. Then my choices are
- Rice, beans, chicken and cheese
- Beans, rice, chicken and cheese
- Chicken, beans, rice and cheese
- Cheese, beans, rice and chicken
or, the above with broccoli or corn
or a seasonal combination (like currently) with carnitas (pulled pork)
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Back before craft brewing suddenly rescued us all the only USAian beer to be found was alcoholic deer pizz (as my German foreign exchange student called it) and Anchor Steam Beer was like an oasis. I am nostalgically sorry to see it go. It was a one of its kind.
d fb
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@flyerboys –
On another channel, a Fresno based radio station that discusses craft beers, there is supposedly an attempt being made to buy the rights to Anchor Steam and its various brands, and return a subset of the beers to market.
In their live radio shows the Firesign Theatre used to refer to ‘bear whiz’ beer…
DB2
The Biggie Bag’s price is attractive, but they always insist on putting deep fried chicken “nuggs” in it. I figure the fries are enough deep fried anything for one day.
Steve
Blame it on Pareto, it’s hard to make money on the long tail of his distribution. Amazon solved that problem with online drop-shipping, no warehousing required. DELL gave IBM a hard time by getting rid of the supply chain by selling customized hardware direct to customer.
Most me-toos are destined to fail.
The Captain
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A few day ago, stopped in at a Taco Bell. Since the chain still has an affiliation with Pepsi, my drink options included Starry - the replacement for Sierra Mist. I got ice and decided to try Starry,. With a caveat, not a big Starry fan.
My taste buds have been really off these past few days. I expected a taste of lemon-lime in the few gulps I took, I only felt a bitter aftertaste, Experiment abandoned - result inconclusive “faulty test equipment” 
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Don’t you find it quite amazing that the most popular drink is tasteless, odorless, and colorless? It also has a bad reputation as in “Water it down.”
The Captain
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Well, that test equipment is usually amenable to rehab. Might take a while, but avoiding pop etc as a preferred beverage will restore the semblance of “taste” to Starry. I’ve never tried it, mind, but taste buds are hugely responsive to rehab programmes, so I can’t imagine it’s much different to other concoctions
Of course, that “popularity” is somewhat irrelevant when a huge swath of the global population has no first world beverage option. For them, its water, some animal milk (which is probably better used as a base for cheese) or home brewed alcohol of some type - which is an indirect way of making the local water safe to drink.
For many, things like soda are rare treats, not affordable for every day consumption.
It’s easy to forget the choices we have available simply because we have more than a couple thousand dollars a year in earnings available to us.
–Peter
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In my current messed up taste buds state, even water seems to have a different taste.
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I did the arithmetic a few years ago. 3 soft drinks per day times 40 years equals something like 40,000 wasted containers… I switched to coffee and tea for my caffeine fix. It took a year or two to reach the point that I no longer miss soft drinks at all. I assume Dunkin’ Donuts coffee bags also waste fossil fuels, but at rate of one bag every two weeks vs. 3 cans per day.
As a diet cola addict, I will attempt to rationalize this. Emphasis on attempt. And definitely on rationalize.
Aluminum is probably the most easily recycled material around, and it’s exceedingly energy efficient. A quick bit of heat and you’ve burned off the paint (and the super thin plastic lining) and melted down the can back into a usable ingot. Way less energy than creating that ingot from ore.
So if you conscientiously recycle the aluminum cans, you’re not really wasting them. They don’t go into landfills, they go into more cans for the next drink.
And yes, I’ve been carefully recycling them for many years.
–Peter
PS - Now that I’m working from home, I’m using 2 liter plastic bottles, which I still recycle, knowing that there’s not a whole lot that can actually be done with the recycled plastic. But the soda is sooo much cheaper this way.
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https://www.reuters.com/legal/hershey-is-sued-over-lack-artistic-detail-reeses-candies-2023-12-29/
And some disappeared candy art.
{ seeking at least $5 million, Cynthia Kelly accused Hershey of deceiving reasonable consumers by falsely promising that its candies would contain “explicit carved out artistic designs.” }
Shame on Hershey!
ralph
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I don’t know how to cut and paste it, but npr has an article asserting that researchers found that three different brands of bottled water were tested and found to have massive amounts of plastic particles in the water. I imagine that this will stimulate follow up studies.