Advice from readers for the man in this week's column who couldn't get off without smelling maple syrup...

To the guy with the maple syrup fetish, maybe he could get a scented Yankee Candle or something (or even a car air freshener, or a can of air freshener that's maple scented) so he wouldn't actually have to spread that sticky (and expensive) stuff around. Depending on how "exact" the odor needs to be, one of those alternatives might fill the bill.

Just My Two Cents

Why not tell ORGASM to open up some instant Maple Oatmeal packets on his nightstand? Should be enough to get him by.

Name Withheld

Fenugreek is a an herbal supplement that is supposedly able to increase lactation in postpartum women. My first wife had troubles when she tried to breastfeed our oldest son. The Lactation Nazis assured her that fenugreek would improve her milk production. The same thing occurred with my second son, from a second wife. She was also advised to try fenugreek. The only side effect of both wives taking fenugreek was an overwhelming scent of maple syrup that was excreted from their sweat glands. After doing some research, I found that fenugreek is used as an artificial flavoring compound for many maple syrup substitutes and that the constant maple syrup smell of the imbiber is a very common side effect.

ORGASM needs to find a girl that is willing to take supplemental herbal pills of fenugreek. That would just about cure his problem. They are available at just about any health food store or vitamin outlet.

Thanks Dan, love your column, would send you a picture of my dick, but I just got done with some GGG sex inspired from you and I'm pretty limp right now.

Simple Syrup Solution

And this week I advised a slave whose mistress wanted to "deny him the pleasures of food"—he was looking for something highly nutritious but as bland as possible—to patronize his local vegan restaurant. My response outraged the easily outraged vegans, of course, and the mail is pouring in. But it also shook loose some practical tips from other readers. They're after the jump...

You recently received a request about a sex slave seeking a bland, yet nutritionally satisfying substance for his mistress to feed him. Might I suggest Nutraloaf? It's a prison food brick made of a mishmash of ingredients, like the world's most unappealing meatloaf, and with a little water, makes an acceptable gruel. Barring this, he might try parenteral nutrition... the bottles or packs of a fluid/paste substance fed to people directly through their stomach when they are medically unable to eat normally for whatever reason.

Thanks for your many years of humor and advice.

Hope This Helps

P.S. I date a Vegan, and not to fear, not all Vegan food is bland and tasteless—she does the baking at Wicked Grounds cafe in S.F. in fact. Nonetheless, I don't think I'll give up my bacon anytime soon. :)

Scott Simon at NPR tried some, the food critic at Chicago Magazine tried some, and The Onion whipped up a batch and forced their whole staff to take part in a taste test:

The loaf is flecked with whole beans and apple pieces, and I used chunky applesauce. But overall, Nutriloaf tastes and feels like wet packing material. It's grainy and sticky, making it that much harder to force down the gullet—it resolutely sticks to the tongue and roof of the mouth, its blandness becoming progressively more unpleasant as it lingers. It was pretty much unanimous that the offensiveness is more a result of texture than flavor, though it's far from tasty—a little on the sweet side, maybe, but mostly just mushy nothingness. Since no one went back for a second bite, it's safe to say that a week's worth of nothing but Nutriloaf (the standard "controlled-feeding status" term for an unruly prisoner) would be sufficiently scarring.

The nutloaf sounds like it more than meets Seeking Slave Food's specifications. And now—in the interests of fairness and balance—a couple of letters from angry vegans:

What's up with your response to "Seeking Slave Food," Dan? It was (intentionally) rude to vegans (why?), and it offered nothing helpful to SSF. Usually if you feel the need to do something like that, you'll at least address the letter writer's question in the responses to one of the later letters, but this column didn't do that. What a waste of space. I think next week you should apologize to folks who eat vegan food (incidentally, you've eaten vegan food too, unless you've never eaten french fries, or popcorn, or an apple, or a glass of orange juice ...), or at the very least explain what you've got against them. Then you should answer SSF's question for real (Health food store protein shakes? Mixed with a thickener? They could even get a vegan hemp shake if they'd like).

Hope

Seeing as vegans make up something on the order of >1% of the adult population in the Western world, don't you feel like a bit of a bully using them as a punchline in a food-themed question? I'm sorry if you've had bad experiences with vegan cuisine in the past, leading you to characterize it as bland an unappealing. I assure you that's not the norm, and if you seek out better restaurants you'll have better experiences, just like any other cuisine.

If your reader is looking for something bland, how about boiled chicken? Unseasoned ground beef? Also, how about pointing your reader toward a nutritionist? There's bland, lifeless food in almost every
cuisine (maybe not Thai), and an expert can help a person find such tasteless treats without developing scurvy.

Also, if your reader is looking for bland, disgusting food, why not point him to British cuisine? Seems like a no-brainer...

Yours truly,

The Vegan Police

P.S. Yes, that's a Scott Pilgrim reference