Saying goodbye has never been so sad.

It was a balmy summer day when my life changed. Sitting in the back of a car, fresh from a trip to New Jersey’s Korean Woori Market, my favorite snack, Sweet Corn Turtle Chips, in hand, the knowledge of tasty stir fry in my future, life couldn’t be better. But that’s when I saw the warning on the back of the Turtle Chips package: Consuming this product can expose you to chemicals including Acrylamide, which is known to the state of California to cause cancer.

How many times have I eaten this snack and never noticed? I first discovered it in my friends’ suite, watching them all pop perfectly bite-sized pieces in their mouths and then twist their faces, trying to decide whether they liked it or not. I was hooked on the first bite. I loved how strong the sweet corn flavor was, how perfectly the layered structure of the chip crunched between my teeth. The snack was my break from a childhood of intensely American snacks—greasy potato chips, white cheddar popcorn, goldfish that implanted itself in the grooves of my molars. I had finally found a snack that satisfied me, and I thought Sweet Corn Turtle Chips and I would live in harmony forever. Wrong. 

Not only had I already bought the bag when I found the cancer warning label, I’d already eaten around half of it. What was I to do with the rest? I don’t like food waste, so I resolved myself to uncomfortably eat the rest just so someone would. But it wasn’t a satisfying ending at all. I still thought about them all the time, craved how they folded under the press of my tongue, and wondered what it would be like to walk the few blocks from campus to H Mart and find them again. I needed a resolution. 

Here’s where my Bwog article comes in. I told myself I would buy one last bag of Sweet Corn Turtle Chips and do a simultaneous snack review and farewell letter. That way, I could savor every bite and then try to let the Sweet Corn Turtle Chips go out into the world without me. 

Where to begin? The bag itself is a sensory explosion. Brat green, blue, and white are the primary colors of the design, though corn yellow makes her appearance through photos of the chip on the bag. A drawn, anthropomorphic turtle takes up much of the bag, with a tear gently falling from its left eye as if it’s wonderstruck by the beauty of the turtle chip. Just next to it is a larger-than-life photo of the chip itself, with an arrow pointing to it to highlight its “4 layered super crispy structure.” The shape of the chip is akin to a turtle shell, but it’s more like four very thin turtle shells stacked on top of each other. My favorite part of the bag is at the bottom, where they write in a newspaper style about corn soup, but it eventually just devolves into them saying “corn soup” over and over again.

Once you split open the bag, you’re hit with the smell of sweet corn. It’s akin to opening a can of creamed corn to make soup or cornbread (for those who have done so). Gingerly, you’ll take out a chip, and examine its four-layer structure. The chips are scraggly looking and aren’t all identical, which gives it a charming vibe. When you place the chip under your tongue, you can choose to either bite it (the boring way) or crush it against the roof of your mouth (the fun but unsustainable way). Sweet corn flavor will flood your mouth and linger before eventually fading into a slightly sweet, slightly salty aftertaste. 

Do I recommend them? Ethically, that question is a bit hard for me to answer. On the basis of the snack experience alone? Absolutely. For corn lovers, they are the ultimate corn-y snack because they carry the flavor so distinctly. For people who hate corn or are ambivalent, you should still have a go. One bite and you’ll say, “Yeah, that’s corn,” like all my friends did, and then find yourself eating a few handfuls more. 

On the basis of health, I don’t know whether I can recommend them. Yes, they are carcinogenic. But you know what else is? Alcohol, cigarettes, burnt toast. The student lifestyle requires being sedentary for much of the day to attend classes and complete coursework, and prolonged periods of sitting are known to increase the risk of cancer. What’s a few bags of Sweet Corn Turtle Chips in the long run? I, personally, will try to give them up, but I won’t judge anyone who chooses not to. 

It’s hard to end this article. By writing the end, I also end my relationship with Sweet Corn Turtle Chips. But who knows? Maybe the divorce will be long and arduous. Maybe we’ll be in a toxic relationship for years to come. I fear I may never replace the hole that Sweet Corn Turtle Chips will forever leave in my heart, but that’s okay. What matters is that our paths intersected at all, and Sweet Corn Turtle Chips will go one cancerous way, and I’ll go another.

Turtle Chips via Author