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We Can't eat Beef, Mad cow ... Can't eat chicken ... bird flu Can't eat eggs ... Salmonella Can't eat pork ... fears of trichinosis Can't eat fish ... heavy metals in the waters has poisoned their meat Can't eat fruits and veggies ... insecticides and herbicides Hmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!! I believe that leaves Chocolate!!!!!!

In 1923 the Curtiss Candy Company invented Butterfinger. Dropped from airplanes over major U.S. cities, it quickly became Curtiss’s number two candy bar, a bite behind Baby Ruth. Now I can afford a Butterfinger whenever I want one, but its lasting a long time still matters.

A Butterfinger is a leisure-eating bar. It forces you to savor. No other candy bar is striated like shale. Its core shatters on your tongue. This makes a Butterfinger dissolve unevenly and mysteriously, leaving you with interesting hard bits to roll around on your mouth. The butter in Butterfinger refers to peanut butter, ground-roasted peanuts being its third ingredient after sugar and corn syrup. Everybody tastes things differently, and what I taste most strongly is molasses, the sixth ingredient, worked to the texture of high-end halvah, only brittler. I don’t particularly like peanut butter except on fresh rye with Hellmann’s mayo (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it). There’s a hint of caramelization in a Butterfinger too, not chewy caramel but the glassy kind that forms when sugar is heated to 310 degrees. The chocolate dip is important, but only for contrast, smooth versus shardy.

Nestlé owns Butterfinger now, but Butterfinger chocolate is better than the chocolate in a Nestlé Crunch. For some horrible reason, Crunch has been tasting fruity lately. A Butterfinger is only 270 calories, about the same as a fruit yogurt. Bart Simpson loves them too. He considers Butterfingers a food group.

And what on the face of God’s earth has happened to the Hershey bar? Close your eyes and you’d think you were sucking Clarksdale, Mississippi, mud. You have to work hard to convince yourself it’s chocolate at all. The fact is, the regular 1.55-ounce Hershey bar in the new vacuum-sealed wrap (no more waxed paper! No more feeling as if you’re opening a present!) isn’t primo chocolate at all. Hershey chocolates have a quality pecking order. Their best is saved for the gold-foil wrapped bars.

When you conche chocolate (rub it back and forth over granite rollers to make it smooth, a process developed by Rudolphe Lindt in 1879), eventually the stones need to be replaced. Microscopic bits of rock erode into the chocolate. Milton Snavely Hershey took good care of his employees and started a school for orphans. Hershey’s Ration D bar, a 450-calorie energy boost un-meltable in the tropics and loaded with vitamin B1 to prevent beriberi, accompanied our soldiers in World War II. So it’s almost un-American to gripe about the Hershey bar. But Milton would be melancholy. His namesake doesn’t taste like Hershey’s, and it’s as thin as an after-dinner mint. Any thinner, and you could read this through it.

These days chocolate is fancy business. People talk about it like it's wine or coffee. Now, I don't know a damn thing about wine, I assume anyone who does is a needle-dick. I'm a fat fuck who likes candy. Chocolate bars from fancy-ass gourmet ones to drugstore classics to weird Midwestern bars filled with all kinds of crap. I hate dark chocolate. I guess dark chocolate is the essence of chocolate, which, like the essence of everything, is dirt. I know some people love it, but not me. And I tried. I eat really stinky cheese, anchovies, weird-ass olives, and all that grown-up stuff, but although I kept tasting it, I couldn't like dark chocolate. It's not candy.

So dark chocolate sucks. All the Green & Black's candy tasted like dirt, except for one: their white chocolate. It's really great — smooth mouthfeel, terrific flavor. Of course, there's really no such thing as "white chocolate," as chocolate is made from cocoa solids, which white chocolate doesn't contain. So it's a little like developing a taste for unicorn piss.

Bacon is the candy of meat, so Vosges Mo's Bacon Bar is a brilliant idea. In fact, it should have been my favorite, but it wasn't, and here's why: It doesn't double the deliciousness to put bacon and chocolate together. It's actually less good than having them separately. Bacon is so good by itself that to put it in any other food is an admission of failure. You're basically saying, "I can't make this other food taste good, so I'll throw in bacon." So bacon-wrapped scallops, for example, convey that you are unable to prepare scallops. You had to go to bacon. Chocolate has the same effect: You dip a shoe in chocolate, it's gonna be pretty good. So putting the two of them together is totally unnecessary, because they're both already 100 percent awesome. It's the same reason nature makes it so that you can't get a blow job and fuck at the same time.

I came across their Owyhee's Idaho Spud, a turd-looking thing with coconut sprinkled on the outside. Fuck, I hate candy-bar coconut. My dad put a shitload of Mounds and Almond Joys in my stocking one Christmas, and I ate so many I puked my guts out. I was about to write off the Owyhee company, but then I unwrapped the chocolaty, peanutty Old Faithful, which brought back a better Christmas memory: nice chocolate like my mom used to melt in a double boiler for her holiday peanut clusters. And then I got to this weird-ass marshmallow in the middle. What is it with the Midwest and their weird shit in the middle of their candy?

Generally speaking, I don't like anything in my candy but candy. Stuff like almonds, for example, just gets in the way. I believe it's the second law of thermodynamics: If there is an almond there, then by definition candy cannot be in that space. Caramel, on the other hand, is candy. How do I know? It's just like pornography: I know it when I taste it. And this bar is all candy. It's modern rich-people chocolate filled with great chocolate-from-a-box-style caramel. It's nice and fat like me, and really delicious.

I needed to get the taste of dirt out of my mouth. That's when peanut butter cups stepped in and saved me. Man, aren't they great? You don't have to know jack - they just taste really good, and the mouthfeel is amazing. The best part of eating them is that we've convinced ourselves in America that peanut butter is real food. Really, peanut butter is basically candy, yet here you can have it for a meal. Theese actually feel nutritious to me.

Know what N-E-C-C-O stands for? New England Confectionery Company. A Clark bar is pure candy. These guys have been doing business since 1847: "The oldest multi-line candy company in the United States." Multi-line is a weasel word there, but they're still way old, so they know what they're doing. These are candy pioneers. The Sky Bar is like a box of chocolates in a bar. And in 1938 it was announced by skywriting all over the country.

Make no mistake, Twin Bing by Palmer Candy Co. is a weird-ass candy. The peanut-and-chocolate-like stuff on the outside is cool, but what is that pink shit in the middle? You know when you buy a box of chocolates and you're looking for the caramels and you bite into one of those pink centers and it's awful? Well, this isn't nearly as bad as that. But it still ain't quite right. They're awesome.

Cadbury is the best chocolate and may be the best food. I've been told that Hershey licenses Cadbury in the U.S. and the Cadbury candy overseas is even better than what we get here. That's OK; we've got Elvis and Dylan. Let them have the better chocolate. (Just make sure if you buy one it wasn't made in China; Cadbury recalled some Chinese-made candy last fall after discovering it contained melamine — which goes in fertilizer!)

My first Dairy Milk was the greatest thing I'd ever eaten. The bars are huge. Maybe in skinny countries people split them or save part for later, but here in the U.S.A. the whole bar is an individual serving. The mouthfeel is perfect, and it's wonderfully creamy, with just the right amount of sweet. If I had to say something bad about it, I would say the name is stupid. Dairy Milk? Of course milk is dairy; that's what dairy is...milk! But I found out why they call it that: Other candy companies put in powdered milk, and these guys use liquid milk. That's classy and well-done—and it's still candy.

This Spud's for You Ingredients 5 large Idaho potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick; 2 Tbs. ancho chile powder; 2 quarts canola or peanut oil and 2 tsp. kosher salt In the same amount of time it takes to drive to 7-Eleven, you can make ' your own chips. Try this recipe from Bobby Flay and you may never dig into a bag again. Preparation Place potato slices between paper towels to make sure they're dry before frying. Heat oil in a large, heavy saucepan over medium heat until the temperature of the oil reaches 375°F. Fry potatoes on both sides until golden brown, turning once, about two minutes total. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a brown paper bag or baking sheet lined with paper towels to drain. Season ASAP with ancho powder and salt. Pringles We don’t know how every “potato” chip ends up being the same shape, and we don’t care. These ultraprocessed crisps are tasty. But what’s with the mustachioed fop on the can? Chee-tos After inhaling the bag like Liz Taylor after bad news from her plastic surgeon, we discovered chee-to is Greek for “confection of the gods.” Surely there must be heroin in these things. Utz Pork Rinds This Confederate staple may look like charred Styrofoam, but it tastes…well, it kind of tastes like that, too. We fried up a pound of bacon to get the taste out of our mouths. Lay’s WOW! Sour Cream & Chive Although these have no fat and fewer calories than normal potato chips, they somehow taste almost as good. But is that really worth the high price of incontinence? We think not. Doritos Nacho Cheesier Doritos are purportedly cheesier than ever, but that’s no excuse for their neon color. They tasted the same as when we were kids—the bag had probably been on the shelf since then. Calbee Hot Garlic Shrimp Flavored Chips The only food that should be fish-flavored is fish. But try telling that to the Japanese, who somehow believe these are fit for human consumption. Even garbage disposal Hiroki hated ’em.

I love America. I've never found anything anywhere that isn't better in the U.S.A. I like to say there's no such thing as bad pizza or a bad blow job, but my best friend claims he got both in Holland, and my friends don't lie unless you pay them. Actually, the French claim to have invented oral sex, and the Italians pizza, but who cares - we perfected them. One thing that's all our own, though, is the all-American potato chip - more Born in the U.S.A. than the Boss.

That the chip came to be in upstate NewYork in 1853 is certain. But there are two stories surrounding its invention. In the first, the cool named Catherine Speck Adkins Wicks was frying doughnuts and slicing potatoes when a potato slice fell into the bubbling fat. Voila - the first chip. Sounds like bullshit. The other story says a customer at a Saratoga Springs restaurant complained about soggy, bland potatoes. The offended cook, Catherine's brother, George Speck Crum, fried some thinly sliced potatoes until they crunched, and made them extra salty out of spite. That's the story I'm buying. I think a lot of real joy has been born of petulance.

Americans are obsessed with chips. We spend $6.3 billion on them every year, and on SuperBowl Sunday, we consume at least 11 million pounds. Some companies make cheese-flavored chips. They all suck. Everyone knows fake orange cheese-flavored powder is meant to go on popcorn. Many companies offer baked versions of their chips, which are supposed to be healthier. They just ain't right. The Patriot Act should have a clause against baked chips.

A lot of chips today have some "kettle cooked" thing going on that makes them extra thick and crunchy. When my buddy from Seattle had his orthodontia, the only thing they wouldn't let him eat was Tim's Cascade out of Seattle. Caramel apples were OK, but not Tim's. Hawaiian Kettle Style Sweet Maui Onion like all kettle chips, they're trying too hard to be "authentic" or something. But the Maui onion flavor is nice.

Salt and vinegar chips are too strong when you're going to eat a whole big bag. And what kind of pussy wouldn't eat at least a whole big bag of chips? All that said, Utz Salt and Malt Vinegar are amazing. I still don't think I could eat a whole giant bag, but if someone else is eating them, I'll grab a handful.

Golden Flake has a really nice, no-kidding Hot Thin & Crispy chip. The word hot on the bag is on fire - that's straightforward, and so are the chips. There's a cheesy poem on back of the bag, but the poem on the dill pickle flavor is better. These chips are made with real pickle. Here's the poem: "Kids and pregnant women think they are tasty/Try some yourself, be hasty" Man, ain't that America? These make me want to salute the flag.

Backer's Red Hot Potato Chips are out of Missouri and they are hot! There's a cartoon of a 1930s piece of ass with the quote "The golden girl with the golden curl." I have no idea what that has to do with chips, but I like it. The chips are really crunchy and seem fresh, but that isn't a problem, because all the wholesomeness is taken away by the hot. Goddamn. These chips are so fucking hot.

Let's say we have to split a bag of chips. You like crunchy, fresh, hippie chips, and I like old-fashioned chips that are a little soggy, so I can force more into my mouth at once. Martin's, out of central Pennsylvania, is for us. All the bags look like they have big crosses on them, so if you're a vampire, that might bum your shit. But the chips are good. The Red Hots are hot, the jalapenos are complex, and the ridges for dipping are strong. This is a great brand of chip.

If a chip bag comes with a waming, pay attention. Route 11 has a flavor called Mama Zuma's Revenge. Tiny letters on the back of the bag read: "Warning: These chips are made with some of the hottest peppers on the planet." Holy shit. They are so goddamn hot. You know those other chips I said were hot? They aren't hot. These will fucking kill you. And if you need something soothing afterward, Route 11s sweet potato chips are really great. They do it all. Far and away my favorite modern potato chip company.

The first thing I love about Better Made is the old-fashioned-looking bag with the weird-ass Little Orphan Annie-like drawing on it. This Detroit company started back in 1930 and brags about being Motown's last remaining chip maker. These are American chips exactly as they should be: not too crunchy, a little bit mushy. You can get a lot in your mouth at once. They also don't have any ridges or added flavor - just salt and cottonfat goodness.

Penn Jillette. Candy Man / Chips, Ahoy. . February 2008 / January 2009.

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