The consequences of aspartame

Scotch fillet, rare, caprese salad and Costa&Catalogna, which isn’t the name of a rock band but the Venetian version of kale. It’s the summer of 1993 and Alice is finishing her typical lunch, using the bread to soak up the pool of blood around the fillet, while her mother- who is a vegetarian- tries not to vomit at the sight of such a meat feast, and reminds Alice that she “is just like her father, a meat obsessed human being.” Shaking her head in disapproval. After that, the routine includes moving to the lounge where Alice stuffs herself with super healthy snacks full of aspartame, while her mother watches a three hour TV marathon of Miami Vice. Quietly sitting in her usual leopard printed leggings and dreaming of living in Florida with Don Johnson. Alice is then handed a Coke, together with a Kinder egg and she is sent to her room to do homework for 3 hours. When daddy comes home at around 7 after his 12 hours at the hospital treating cancer, he sneaks into the kitchen when mamma is taking the ravioli Rana out of the ready meals package. She quickly sends him away- she doesn’t want to be caught. In 10 minutes she will call everyone on the table and will publicly pour some fresh parmesan cheese and olive oil on the ravioli, which will make her feel like she has somehow made the meal. Alice was wondering. Was it the uncooked meat? The sugary snacks? The pre-cooked ravioli? The soft drinks? All these cancer-inducing foods my father wasn’t aware of? (My mum was, for sure). 25 years later Alice has decided to write a book about her teenage life. She still can’t understand how something so cool like a book can originate from such crappy meals. Let’s face it. She wasn’t fed properly. Yet she turned into a novelist who thinks her youth was great. Maybe the pre-cooked pre-packaged stuff has given her some sort of structure. Or maybe all that plastic pushed her to break free. Maybe you can only rise from the ashes if you start from the ashes. Or maybe it was the aspartame. It artificially sweetened up her whole childhood.* *stay tuned for news on my upcoming book which features Alice in the wonderlands of the Nineties.