Can It
Sometimes I wonder about odd little things. And no snickering about that “sometimes” modifier; I do sometimes wonder about perfectly ordinary things, I just don’t usually talk about it when I do.
But my current case in point: I’ve got this can of, well let’s call it fruit soda, though the manufacturers call it a naturally flavored sparkling juice beverage, and it’s in a slightly atraditionally shaped can. So I was curious about it. I noted that it’s 8.4 ounces. That “point four” is an odd number, so I assumed that it was a can sized in metric and then converted to ounces for the american market. Except that, right next to “8.4 fl oz.” it says 248 mL. And God readily agreed with me that 248 is just as odd of a number as 8.4. Well, technically they’re both even numbers, but you know what I mean.
So then God pointed out the other number just before those two. In type twice as large is the nice round number 90, in a drawn box with the smaller words “calories per can” also enclosed. Now as round numbers go, 90 is pretty good, but 100 is generally better. Except that with calories we’re generally looking for smaller. So did they get a deal on 250mL cans but then only fill them to 248 so they could get a round number of calories? Did they look at 8 ounce cans and reject them because 86 calories was too weird a number for marketing? Would they have had to come up with a new can size, that their supplier didn’t already carry in order to do 100 calories?
God just shook her head and complained that people say she works in mysterious ways.
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