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I went to Jack's 99 Cent Store located in midtown Manhattan to explore their food products and I was seriously surprised. For those of you who do not know Jack's 99 Cent Store, this is probably the most popular dollar store in the city. There are always hordes of people filling its 3-floor store and no matter when you go, the store is full. The food is on the ground floor. As soon as you enter, there are multiple aisles of food. I was incredibly impressed by the selection. It is almost as good as the grocery store minus fresh perishable foods.
One particular product that caught my eye was frozen Jamaican patties. They were in an open freezer and cost $1.28 each. It's not something I eat regularly but I do love these patties. Jamaican patties consist of a flaky dough with a spicy filling that can be meat or non-meat. When hot, the dough and the warm filling is a great combination. From a health perspective, I think packaged goods like this should be consumed as an occasional treat rather than a meal substitute or everyday snack. The main reason I say this (and this goes for many products at dollar stores) is because the list of ingredients are long and most ingredients are hard to pronounce. Most seem more like chemicals than food. I assume the reason for the list of unrecognizable ingredients is to help make the product last longer and contributes nothing to our biological health.
So I purchased two patties (beef and chicken), went back to my office, popped them into the microwave for 3 minutes and voila, I had two different Jamaican patties for lunch. They were actually tastier than I expected. I was only planning to have a small taste but ended up eating them both! Yes, the dough was not the freshest and the filling looked like weird mush but it was yummy - not too spicy, full of robust flavors, not too salty and had a good combination of taste and texture. Overall, I give it like 4 out of 5 for taste but here's the catch: 10 hours later while I was watching T.V. before bed, my stomach started to cramp, my intestines started making rumbling noises, and before I knew it, I was on the toilet having diarrhea.
As I reflect on this experience, I truly believe the good gastronomy must result in good bowl movements. The quality of our shits is a measure of the quality of the food that we put in our mouths. There's a Chinese saying that goes something like this: The secret to a happy life is a good bowl movement. So as you eat from the dollar store, pay attention to how the food affects the quality of your shit because remember, garbage in equals garbage out.
I think I'll be better off eating Jamaican patties made from scratch next time around.