The power of disgust

Yes, it’s that time of year again, Christmas! By which I mean I’m compiling this year’s HTSI food and drink gift guide. The window for suggestions is brief as I need to file in two weeks. As well as items that are edible and drinkable, I’m looking for food and drink accessories: tableware, kitchenware, barware. Plus any gourmet-inspired gifts: a cake-logo T-shirt, an olive-shaped trinket, a watermelon-embossed bag. Please send ideas pronto.

Of course while I sort through Christmas product, I’m also enjoying the fact that it’s August (aka silly season). Case in point: Tesco’s Birthday Cake and M&S’s Red Diamond Strawberry & Crème sandwiches. I haven’t tried either but in true silly season hack fashion, I’m not going to let that stop me writing about them.

These “sandwiches” are either an attempt by supermarkets to cultivate a Japanese-style consumer market for sweet sandos. Or part of a growing trend for curio-horrors brought out purely with the intention of inviting disgust and curiosity and going viral. Recently I wrote about blue foods, in particular Innocent’s Bolt from the Blue smoothie. Blue foods used to be accepted as disgusting. Lately that disgust has morphed into something more nuanced as certain items have come to be seen as healthy thanks to their use of ingredients such as spirulina. Innocent’s Bolt from the Blue was a marketing success largely on the back of a social media campaign that asked whether the smoothie was in fact blue or green. Opinion was divided.

Tesco and M&S’s “limited edition” sandos might not seem so disgusting if they were shelved among desserts rather than next to the savoury baps. But that kind of instore placement is surely part of the plan. And just like that I’ve fallen for it by devoting this week’s column to writing about it. [Clutches pearls] I feel manipulated… but in the best possible way. And thus we learn another valuable lesson about grabbing people’s attention in the oversaturated media landscape of early 21st century Britain. Disgust and curiosity are powerful tools. Use them together wisely.