Or My Name Isn't What?

My wife is once again with child. As her husband and co-parent, that’s a pretty big deal to me for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I am no longer permitted to eat microwave popcorn. Apparently, microwave popcorn smells bad. This smell, combined with the hormonal break-dancing going on inside her body, makes her want to throw up.

Thus, I’ve done what most decent men would do in such a situation, which is to wait until she’s gone to bed before I eat this delicious snack. You would assume this would solve what had been a pretty tricky dilemma. The problem is that many pregnant women develop hypersensitive olfactory skills. They smell things that aren’t really there, or, at least things that don’t seem to be there to the average unpregnant person.

There’s an obvious biological rationale to this, of course. Often in human history, bad smells came from potentially harmful—even toxic—substances. But up until a few days ago, I did not know that microwave popcorn happens to fall into that very category: toxic!

“Why do you have to make that microwave popcorn?” She said to me the other night upon my retiring to bed. “It makes me sick.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I wait until you’re asleep before I eat it.”

“But I’m not asleep.”

“But you’re in bed. I assumed you were asleep.”

“How can I sleep with that smell?”

“I think you’re exaggerating.” (Editors note: Never say this to a pregnant woman.)

“Mild explicative. I am not exaggerating! I’ll throw up on you right now, if you don’t believe me. Besides, that stuff is bad for your lungs.”

“You’re being crazy again. How is microwave popcorn bad for your lungs? I’m not smoking it.”

“It just is. There’s a chemical in it that gets in your lungs when you pop it. I told you that already.”

“Well, what am I supposed to eat for a bedtime snack, then?”

“Not popcorn!”

And thus the conversation ended. At the time I chalked up the toxicity talk to semi-conscious babbledly bok, but, unfortunately, as it turns out, she is right. Left to its own devices, microwave popcorn will kill you.

I looked it up online, and, according to a report by the Food and Drug Administration, microwave popcorn bags are coated with a chemical. When heated, this coating breaks down into a substance known as perfluorooctanoic (PFOA). Like most unpronounceable terms with rather benign looking acronyms, perfluorooctanoic is a “likely carcinogen.” What is worse, an acid derived from this substance, when injected into volunteer laboratory animals, has caused cancer and thus would mostly likely cause cancer in any human willing to be injected with a proportionate amount. (No thanks.)

As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, most microwave popcorn is also coated with another substance known as diacytel, which almost sounds like something you would ingest voluntarily to lose weight. Diacytel is fake butter flavoring and also one of the leading causes of bronchiolitis obliterans, a respiratory illness suffered by popcorn factory workers who’ve inhaled the chemical’s fumes over an extended amount of time.

What I’ve always liked about microwave popcorn, at least up to this point, was its reputation as a fairly healthy snack. It has fewer calories, fat and cholesterol than many of my former bedtime snacks, such as cheese and crackers, milk and cookies, or, for a brief stint in college, Jack and Coke. After years of trial and mostly error, I really thought I’d found a reasonable mesh of nutrition and taste. However, substances which inspire scientists to break out their Latin in order to avoid names like Popcorn Lung Rot cannot be considered healthy.

Granted, I am not a popcorn factory worker who has been breathing diacytel for years and years, nor am I a laboratory mouse who has been injected with toxic levels of the substance to find out if the substance is toxic. However, I am a happily married man who would like to remain so, and therefore it seems my microwave popcorn days have come to an end. At least until the baby is born and she cannot smell so well, or until they come out with a new report that says perfluorooctanoic actually lowers cholesterol and gets rid of unwanted nose hair.

In the mean time, I’ll have to do my best to eat things that have no smell. Sounds delicious.