As a food scientist I must warn you: snack flavours are intensifying beyond our control

I am a food scientist. I've spent my career in pursuit of greater snacks. It's been the biggest mistake of my life.

My road to ruin began upon graduating from McGill's prestigious Taste Studies: Sense of Sensation program, where I received accolades for my dissertation on the untapped potential of nougat. My research impressed the powers that be, and I was handpicked to join the secret MK-YUMMTRA program.

At first, our tasks were standard issue: to engineer neon-coloured sludge and salty breaded goods in a way that was appetizing, creating products that people would enjoy and then immediately regret consuming. Those were the salad days of the snack trade.

The first dark portents occurred when we were tasked with creating a banana-flavoured soft candy that was somehow not repulsive. One of my colleagues argued it was an impossible task. As a flavour, banana had no place on the shelves alongside cherry and watermelon, even grape. It was an affront to nature. We shouted him down, believing science had no limits aside from our imagination.

Our concoction was tested on a student volunteer who claimed he could eat or drink anything. We took his eagerness for a challenge. It was too much. In our arrogance, we'd over-sweetened. The resulting dopamine overload destroyed his taste buds. He now eats nothing but granola and milk. But the loss of his senses didn't impede our morale. We'd accomplished the unthinkable, and split the banana from its disgusting origins. The food snack horizon had been cracked wide open.

We became — ironically — addicted to the pursuit of pushing flavour blasts into unprecedented dimensions.

A memo was handed down. It contained simple instructions: create a cheese flavour to outclass the competition. There were murmurs of concern, of course: powdered cheese had already been perfected. We pressed ahead anyway, unaware our pride was to be our undoing, each of us working tirelessly to create the ultimate in extreme cheese.

The nightmare is that we succeeded. Early tests showed promise, a cheese that was both sharp and savoury, feisty yet familiar, and clocking in at an astounding 98% cheddar purity.

But then it began to expand. We'd created a cheese so bold it could not be contained.

We knew then the world would not be the same.

The subject continued to evolve, aging and spreading faster and more easily than any cheese we've ever seen. It had but one goal: to seek and absorb any bland surface into one exceptional being of dairy...including scientists.  

I can hear it coming for me. It rumbles just outside the walls of this room. It will find a way in.

We designed it with the singular purpose of making things delicious. In that sense it's rather like its father. Oddly, even in my terror, I find myself proud of our creation. If you're reading this, it's too late: the worst has come to pass and the cheese has overtaken me.

Let my delicious corpse be a lesson: some flavours lie beyond the capacity of good taste.

Farewell.

P.S.: To my human son: you should really just eat apples.   

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