Atlanta, Georgia: The Centers for Disease Control have announced a new issue on the top of the day-to-day public health agenda: the American hummus addiction.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an expose on tobacco farmers converting their land to the cultivation of chickpeas, switching from the tightly regulated cigarette market to the laissez-faire territory of hummus production. Tobacco farming’s reputation as the career of criminals and deviants seems unlikely to change with this changing of tack in their assault on American well-being.
“Really, it’s a financial issue,” said Shady McNasty, president of the newly formed Tobacco, Chickpea and Ricin Manufacturers of America. “If it happens to be threatening people’s health, well, that’s just a bonus.”
The CDC lists a number of health threats presented by hummus. The most present one is the contribution of hummus to the obesity epidemic. Before the advent of hummus, pita used to be sold in the cleaning supplies aisle and was widely preferred over paper towels due to its high absorbency and low likelihood of being mistaken for food. Now pita sales threaten to surpass that of the traditional American staple: Wonderbread.
Another major threat posed by hummus consumption is a condition the CDC calls “Hipsterism”. Symptoms include frequent use of nonsense words like “babaganoush” and “tabouleh”, a yearning for foods only sold in Europe, and wearing flannel. Later phases of the condition lead to the pronunciation of Arabic words as if one’s throat were on the verge of closing up and shopping at Trader Joe’s.
Hummus consumption has long been on the NSA’s list of threats to internal security. Most hummus comes from distributors with ties to shadowy organizations. In fact, the brand Tribes used to be called “Al-Qaeda Terror Spreads Incorporated”, but changed its name in the interest of market penetration. Further, on the website of Sabra, they list their company mission as “fattening up the American public so that they’re not able to resist the eventual Middle Eastern takeover”.
Efforts to slow the surge of hummus consumption are already underway. Mayor Bloomberg, a well-know pioneer of legislating American diets, has announced an initiative to ban the consumption of hummus indoors to avoid a phenomenon known as “second-hand dipping”, where innocent bystanders of hummus consumption are tempted to request a taste. Other cities have begun passing taxes on hummus to reduce demand. This has only lead to the development of a hummus black market, where corner stores are selling it for pennies per dip.
The CDC ended its report with the announcement of a new media campaign in which it will recommend Americans engage in other activities instead. It provides a sample slogan, which reads, “Hummus. Not even once.”