“I have this peanut butter,” I thought out loud, “and in that drawer over there, not out of my reach, I have a spoon.” The math didn’t take too long, and before I knew it I had the peanut butter jar in one hand and a spoon (carefully selected for its equilibrium of both length (for reaching the bottom of the jar) and thickness (for easier application of maximum toque to pry remnants of peanut butter from the interior sides of the jar)) in the other. I opened the jar and, to my dismay, there wasn’t enough in there for two spoons full of peanut butter. This was going to be, at best, a one spoon adventure followed by the discarding of a spent peanut butter jar. I started scraping at the insides of the jar, getting the bigger groupings of the ‘good stuff’ first followed by the scooping up of trace remnants that managed to survive previous spoon attacks. I took my spoon out, and it was very full. I looked at the jar and the jar said to me (in a manner of speaking), “25% less fat!” I looked in the jar and saw that, yes, there still was more peanut butter in there. I looked again at the label which still said to me, “25% less fat!” I looked at my spoon. Then more math kicked in. The peanut butter I currently have on my spoon, I thought, doesn’t have the full amount of fat as other peanut butters. It has three fourths of the industry standard. Hmmm... By volume, I analyzed, there was three times as much peanut butter in my spoon as was left in the jar. Curious... What does that mean? Well, that means that in total there a four thirds of peanut butter units available to me. Seventy five percent of those remaining units were on my spoon, and the other 25% was in the jar. So, the label was not only telling me the truth but also posing me with a challenge. Granted, if I ate all the peanut butter, there would still be 25% less fat in relation to the total volume of peanut butter. However, in relation to the spoon-full, if I managed to heap EVERYTHING onto that spoon, I would then have the full 100% of the fat and therefore, as anyone who eats knows, 100% of the flavor (in my eyes, fat = flavor, flavor = pleasure, no fat = no pleasure). Granted, all this math is ridiculously wrong, well, the fraction work is kind of correct but the justification of 100% of the fat is utterly false, just a really stupid way for me to make acceptable, in my mind, the total and unforgiving removal of every single atom of peanut butter in that jar and, of course, the permanent relocation of said peanut butter from the jar to my stomach. From this rambling you the reader can learn to important things about me and my life. 1 – I like peanut butter by the spoon. 2 – I need to get out more. For further proof, please check out this ridiculous series of equations that do not prove my point in any way, yet looks impressive at first glance to someone who didn’t read what you’ve read thus far.  Every bit of this actually makes perfect mathematical sense EXCEPT for the very last line in which I made a few assumptions, ignored how the peanut butter’s fat content is evenly dispersed throughout every molecule of the volume of the peanut butter, and lied. |
