I recently caught up with Carolyn de la Peña, a professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis and the author of the fascinating book "Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda," to get her take on our national obsession with sweet.
3. Sweets are a national obsession, especially alfajores, a sort of South American Moon Pie most often filled with dulce de leche.
Also implied are consumer excess and a certain obsession with sweets, which in turn conjures up the hollow celebrations of birthdays and holidays that are among our cultural staples.
An unfortunate early ploy was to explain Brenda Leigh's personality quirks through an obsession with sweets; the writers moved away from that, but they never did make sense of her frenzied trampling of suspects' civil rights or her horrible treatment of Fritz and her parents.
An obsession with sweets.
This obsession with sweets isn't just about appetite.
Princeton Review sits in the sweet spot of America's obsession with testing.
Act II opens with "Oh fiamma soave" ("Oh sweet flame"), an aria of romantic obsession sung by the King, who is disguised as a shepherd named Uberto.
Other than that, I liked HEAVE HO, and Steve Austin's LEFT EYE and KETTLELE corn in the grid reminded me of my obsession with the salty, sweet snack.
Sometimes sweet and innocent, sometimes deranged with maniacal obsession, she provides the story with the layers required to give it depth and deflect the usual clichés of horror.
