Spaghetti-O’s, An American Icon in Food

“Campbell Soup recalls 15 Million Pounds of Spaghetti-O’s
by Mary Jalonick, AP Jun 17, 2010
WASHINGTON- Campbell Soup Co. is recalling 15 million pounds of Spaghetti-O’s with meatball after a cooker malfunctioned at one of the company’s plants in Texas and left the meat undercooked.”

Spaghetti-O’s - only the name is still Italian. Inside the can are small circles of different sizes of grossly overcooked pasta, boardering on mush, coated with a red sauce created with unpronouncable chemicals and the real juice of one half of one cherry tomato to give it color.

Everyone I know has eaten Spaghetti-o’s. As kids we loved them. Plus, it helped introduce our bodies to processed foods and preservatives. A toddler can live on NesQuick chocolate milk and Spaghetti-O’s. Bachelors still live on cans of Spaghetti-o’s. Recall 15 million cans because the meatballs might be slightly undercooked? Are they nuts? Toddler’s eat cookies off the floor, they’ll eat anyting off the floor. Bachelors just eat anything whether it’s off the floor or not. I knew a bachelor who pulled three rock hard Kentucky Fried biscuits out of his fridge. “You can’t eat those,” I said, “they’re stones by now.”
“You just have to let them soak in coffee a minute and they’re fine,’ he said, and proceeded to eat them.

I don’t think a slightly undercooked meatball - especially since there’s only one meatball in a can - is going to have any negative impact on anyone. Even if the lone meatball is undercooked, surely the preservatives will kill any bacteria along with the nutritional value.

Every home with kids has a few cans of Spaghetti-O’s in the cabinets right now. They are fast food, if not at home, they are perfect for the beach ever since they added the pull tab peel off top. Spaghetti-O’s are a staple in Shelter Island beach bags. They don’t need to be wrapped, you can drop a few cans in your beach bag with the Oreo’s and juice boxes for treats. There’s no social rules yet on what you can give kids for beach food. As long as you have SPF sunscreen and slather them every half hour you qualify as a good mother, no one pays attention to what you’re feeding your kids. There were times when I wanted to feed mine to the sharks, but there’s too many witnesses at the beach, plus the sharks are only in the deep channel and I knew my kids couldn’t swim out that far no matter how much I encouraged them.

I’m just waiting for the news to report some idiot who will try to take advantage of the situation.
“She was a normal nine year old, my Brittany. She loved Spaghetti-O’s, we didn’t know we had a can with a bad meatball. We think the meatball was made from a mad cow because overnight, our angel, became bratty, rebellious, sneaky, and talks to us in “textspeak”. She keeps saying, “OMG, WTF is wrong with you people?” to us. We’re suing Campbell’s for three million dollars. They took our sweet little girl from us. Now, they have to give us three million, or they have to take her till she’s 25. We just want what’s best for Brittany.”