Children across the USA are gobbling Peeps, those marshmallow chicks and bunnies that are an inescapable fixture of Easter baskets.
What's up with Peeps, anyway?
There is something vaguely creepy about Peeps. They are blob-like and ubiquitous. Their eyes have no expression. With little taste, no nutritional value (though only 32 calories apiece) and a shelf life of two years, they hover somewhere between foodstuff and material object.
These traits have inspired many to test their physical properties. On some of the more than 200 Peeps Web sites, you can see fetishists skewering, microwaving, hammering, decapitating and otherwise abusing the spongy confections.
In 1998, two Emory University scientists, Gary Falcon and James Zimring, produced what may be the definitive Peeps study. They dunked Peeps in liquid nitrogen, subjected them to 350-degree heat, and put them in a vacuum chamber, among other procedures. The results can be found at www.peepresearch.org.
Matthew Beals of Brooklyn, who is completing a documentary about Peeps, thinks the phenomenon is a function of the candy's iconic status. "What could be more American," he asked, "than something that's mass produced and covered in sugar?"
(nytimes.com)
