Nutritional Profiling

A lovely colorful couple at the co-op during the Solstice Festival. I love Seattle!

One of my many part-time jobs is doing food demonstrations and or handing out samples of certain food products I believe in. I spent four days this week giving out samples of whole food energy bars, first at the Fremont Solstice Festival and again at the Health Fair associated with the Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon. It amazes me the differences in politeness amongst the public. We had six different flavors available for people to sample-- they were allowed to take two samples total. The company I work for provides very generous samples-- not simply a taste, but a bar that is 60% of the size of the retail bar. Some people would come up and assume they could only have one sample and be delighted to receive two, while others were irritated when I would not allow them to take as many as they wanted. A few people came through and took handfuls from each basket, even has I repeated two samples per person (I swear I'm going to be saying "two samples per person!" in my sleep-- I must have said it thousands of times). I'll tell you a secret-- if you are nice to me and ask if you can have another couple samples or we have a chat I'm happily going to give you more samples. If you just reach and grab while avoiding eyecontact I'm going to be mad.

We have a whole spiel to tell people about our product-- gluten, dairy, soy, and wheat free, no added sugar etc. I admit that some people I could tell simply did not care about that message, and I found myself nutritionally "profiling" people. I was guessing the people who came up whose children were eating lollipops that no added sugar was not a concern. Likewise, the people taking granola bars from the table next to ours from a company which is affiliated with ours but whose products contain gluten and dairy, probably did not care about the anti-allergen potential of our product. But many people surprised me with their questions and concerns.

I love to talk to people, but I admit working 16 hours over two days, standing on concrete and saying the same thing over and over is incredibly exhausting. Marc and I are finally having a quiet day where we sit on the couch and watch mindless television in between naps. It is much needed rest.