The "Tell Me It Ain't So!!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just finished our evening meal of crab cakes and garlic buttered potatoes.  The crab cakes were purchased this morning at a local supermarket as was the bag of garlic butter potatoes.  We usually have a main dish, vegetable and starch, but the crab cakes we bought are very large and the bag of potatoes looks as if it was meant for 4 people, so we chose just the crab cake and potatoes which tonight acted as both the vegetable and starch.   Great meal and after we finished I asked what was for dessert.  Carol replied, "You can have some of the tapioca pudding you bought yesterday or we can have a pack or two of the Tastykake treats we purchased a few days ago at another store.  Love 'em both, so I decided to have a small helping of tapioca and a pack of creme-filled chocolate tasty cakes.  To me, a meal is not complete unless you have a dessert at the end of it.  Actually some days I make my entire meal my dessert; such as when we have home-made apple dumplings.  But, I recently read an article published by The NPD Group which said that Americans appear to be losing interest in dessert.  The NPD Group is a leasing global information company.  So, who is this NPD and what do they know.  When we travel to the Jersey Shore for vacation during the summer or a bit further away to the Caribbean, we always are asked what we will have for dessert after our main meal is devoured.  I know they make more money when serving a dessert, but the meal wouldn't seem complete if I didn't have dessert.  The study by The NPD Group found that for the past 30 years, those having dessert after their meal has declined 24% in that 30 year period.  So, they surmise that by February 27, 2054, the last dessert will have been served.  Yeah, right!  Not if I'm still alive (which probably won't happen)!  So, what can I do to change that?  I decided to start my own Group and do my own study checking on how many of my friends eat dessert with every meal.  I checked with my three children, brother, sister-in-law and a few close friends and all but one of them said they eat dessert with every meal, except perhaps breakfast.  The NPD Group didn't say how many people they surveyed, so I'm assuming a dozen people is enough for my survey. One of the main reasons for not having a dessert in the study was that it made the meal too complicated.  Now, how complicated is it to open a pack of Tastycakes?  I don't have to have some fancy-schmancy dessert all the time, just so it is sweet and I can dunk it in milk.  Even a cupcake with icing and a snicker's bar on top would work for me.  Then, I read that the top three desserts in the survey were fruit, cake and ice cream.  How complicated is it to scoop ice cream into a bowl or slice a peach in half?  Now, the cake...that can take a bit more time to make, but once it is made it can supply me with desert for at least two days.  Last part of the report said that older Americans, adults over 65, are the heaviest dessert eaters.  I sort of agree with that, but remember it didn't say heaviest adults.  This group tends to eat dessert twice as often as any other age group the report said.  Boy, they never saw my 14-year-old grandson eat dessert at my house after the main meal was complete.  He can devour half of a nine-square inch pan of his Amah's banana-split dessert in less than 10 minutes.   The report claimed that those over 65 ate 76 desserts per person per year at home.  The same report taken four years ago said that number to be 104, so by doing some weird calculations, they were able to come up with that date in 2054 as the final meal with dessert.   Now that's 34 years from now and I'll be 109, so maybe they'll allow me to eat that final dessert for everyone. I'm laying claim to that final dessert right now!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

My last dessert?  Tell me it ain't so!