A visit to the health food shop

[stapsdoes101things]

A few weeks ago I went to the health food shop in Guildford (yes, it has one - and doesn't have a Waitrose yet - sometimes I wonder if I'm living in a parallel universe). I came out with a bag of honey cashews (not relevant to this post), a box of nettle tea and a bar of carob - both of which are on the Omnivore's Hundred. (The list says 'carob chips', but I think the form doesn't really make much difference...)

I hated the carob. I think it was the most horrible thing I've ever tasted. I ate about four squares - the last three were to see if the previous one had really been as nasty as I thought.

The problem with carob (apart from the taste, I mean, which is obviously subjective, and you might love it) is that it's marketed as an alternative to chocolate, but the only thing that it cuts out is the caffeine. The fat is still there, and it needs quite a lot of sweetener to make it palatable. And probably less than 5% of my daily caffeine intake comes from chocolate. So, really, I don't see any point in my eating carob.

The nettle tea, by contrast, tasted quite pleasantly of grass clippings and has joined the colony of herbal and fruit teabags in my desk drawer at work.