Ensnared by Subtle Understatement.

I’m currently succumbing to a new addiction: unsalted cashew nuts. Unlike the salted and sometimes flavoured varieties, the raw ones have a gentle taste. Some would call it weak, but I’d prefer ‘subtly understated.’ We Brits have a history of favouring things subtly understated, and I’m something of a traditionalist in that regard.

(It has to be said that this tradition is fast disappearing under relentless attack by the sharks of the corporate mentality, but I’m a little deficient in the money department so I’m largely unaffected. Corporate sharks favour people with fat pockets, fat egos, and a resultant lack of awareness, and so having no money is the best of all repellents.)

But anyway… There’s a problem with subtly understated flavour. You put a handful in your mouth and chew and chew and chew until the capacity of the nuts to be further chewed finally expires. That’s the point at which you realise that you haven’t experienced quite enough flavour, and so you have another mouthful, and another and another and so it goes on. This is why I think it would be advisable to legally require that unsalted cashew nut packets carry a Government Warning:

Unsalted Cashew Nuts are Highly Addictive. Don’t Start.

It might even be required that they be sold in plain packaging so that young people are not lured by seductive fonts and manipulative colour schemes. The thought of having a rash of nut dens erupting like pustules on the fringes of leafy suburbia fills a traditionalist like me with more horror than the disgrace of my own addiction.