Have you ever wanted to eat sugary snot?

Picture this—you’re on your usual Morton William’s run. First stop: the drink aisle. Sometimes your usual dining hall beverage doesn’t cut it, so what’s on the menu tonight? Perhaps a prebiotic soda. Or would you consider a CBD seltzer? Oh, Maybe a mango milk tonic! 

See, you’re a person who’s drink-curious—when you see a soft drink that looks groundbreaking, you get it to gulp it. And on this latest run, there’s something new. It’s neither a can nor a bottle. It’s a bag, like one of those apple sauces you ate as a child. The packaging is nice; it’s streamlined and modern. And holy smokes! Apparently ten calories and no added sugar. Incredibly suspicious, but it beckons and tempts the psyche. So you purchase it, and review it for the student publication you write for.

Everydaze Essential C’s Konjac Jelly 

Source: Morton Williams

Cost: 2 for $5.00; $2.50 Each

Sensory Observations: 

Sight: Nice Packaging! Rubied with slight shade variation to mimic bubbles against a bottle. There is a nice bottle design in the center. 

Touch: The bag is nice to the touch. The material does not feel cheap. The cap comes off with a tense twist. 

Sound: The cap cracks as the plastic machinery snaps from the force of your fingers. It’s satisfying, almost like the opening of a can.

Touch (2): Pushing the Konjac jelly from the bag takes considerable force. It’s like forcing dried toothpaste out of the tube or overly firm jello through the gaps of your fork. It feels like a brick moving throughout a sac. When you apply pressure the clump moves throughout it. Weird.

Smell: The first thing that hits is the aroma of the cola flavoring. It’s artificial, but so is the taste of cola soda in the first place. Recognizing that, of course, cola is a real flavor. But not the oversugared one we get. That’s fake. Besides that, there is no other smell.

Touch (3): When it finally hits your mouth, taste is not the first sensation. Touch is. Perhaps you prematurely stopped your sucking, so a string dangles out of the small o formed by your lips. Or maybe you have a solid cylindrical amount in your oral cavity. It’s like eating Orbeez, an Orbeez millipede; an Orbeez centipede; an Orbeez worm. It doesn’t dissolve in your mouth. It just slides around like a slug or one of those bad hand sanitizers where the gel slides around in a pool of alcohol and aromas. Except instead of your hand it’s your mouth. It’s along your tongue. Calling it a jelly drink is generous. It’s barely a liquid, barely a drink. It’s closer to solid or something in between. 

Taste: Much like the smell, it’s cola. The gel itself is flavorless. The flavor seems to come from an added liquid. Sometimes, depending on the orientation of your bag or the power of your sucking strength you get less jelly. In its place you get a rather sharp feeling flavor liquid. It sinks to the bottom of your tongue and flavor bites at its edges like piranhas to a flank of flesh. 

Sight (2): The jelly is colorless. It’s clear. It forms a perfect cylinder out of the tube. There’s a slightly brown sheen on its surface: the cola flavoring. It looks like snot or maybe aquasonic ultrasound transmission gel.

Touch (4): When not in the mouth, it spreads with a little force. Sort of like a jellyfish, if you’ve ever felt one.

Overall Observations:

When eating, I recommend a slow pace and immediately chew and swallow. Don’t let the jelly explore your mouth. It is not an enjoyable experience. It’s weird.

This post is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This food is not a food of honor… no highly esteemed feed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here. What is in Morton Williams is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular food…it increases towards a center… the center of danger is in Morton Williams… of a particular size and shape, and in Morton Williams. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of taste and touch. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially ingest this food physically. This food is best shunned and left uninhabited.

Botanically, Konjac is an Eastern and Southeastern Asian plant. Amongst other forms, it can be made into jelly. Historically, there were a series of deaths among children and the elderly because they suffocated from the konjac jelly in the early 2000s. Part of this is because konjac does not melt in the mouth. Instead, you need to chew it. Difficulties with eating, like trying to suck out a lodged piece of jelly, can cause it to launch into your throat and block the airway. As a result of this, the European Union and Australia have banned it.

Essential C’s Konjac Jelly boasts claims like “reduce hunger*,” “inner beauty boost*,” and “smart, snack swaps.” The asterisks are included on the packaging because those are unevaluated claims. Nutritionally, the jelly was high in vitamin C—400 mg—and in collagen—1000 mg. It is 10 Calories, 10 Calories that you probably fully extend by trying to eat. Thankfully, this means ingestion probably beats scurvy with 440% of the daily recommended vitamin C intake and hopefully improves skin elasticity. That’s all there is to say about it. What do you get from it? $2.50 less in your account for a difficult snack and maybe some health benefits.

Ratings: 

Kyle: 2/5 at most because he’s generous and finished it. He thinks that the cola flavor is barely a redeeming quality. It would be nice to eat in a weird party theme like “dystopian technocracy” or “alien cuisine” or “no joy.” There’s a lot of potential for konjac jelly, but think the bag presentation was bad. As a jelly bowl, it could be great.

Eli: 3.5/5. “Likes the texture,” which Kyle thinks is messed up. Dislikes the cola flavor, could rate the jelly higher if there was a fruit flavor (which there is, expect a regrade next semester). 

Cola Konjac Jelly in Hartley via Kyle Murray

Cola Konjac Jelly Packaging via Eli Reville