Picking up litter every day in a neighborhood with a few ice cream stores, I find a lot of discarded containers still containing ice cream. People wonder how we waste so much food, yet look the other way when it’s themselves.

I’ve noticed a lot of the ice cream doesn’t melt, but stays in a semi-solid state. Though I used to love ice cream, now it seems cloying and disgusting, so much fat and sugar. How can it compare with an apple or peach? Why would anyone choose ice cream?

Here’s what I think was someone’s ice cream that they left as litter. It might be some bastardization of coffee, but the point remains. It hasn’t melted. What did they do to it to make it retain this consistency in temperatures in the mid-80s F (around 29 or 30 C)?

It must have been there a while before I found it. When I picked it up, the top was fairly solid. I’d guess when the person bought it, they expected it would act like ice cream or at most butter, that it would melt as it warmed, eventually to become liquid. Even butter at that temperature melts.

I suppose the manufacturer expects people to finish shoving it down their maw before it reveals this unnatural, unholy resting state. Then they don’t have to worry about people discovering its nastiness. How do you describe what it turned into? Does our language have words for a state of matter that didn’t exist when English was starting?

How do we let this result happen? It illustrates to me a loss of connection to nature, especially fruits, vegetables, and nuts. I don’t see how you could enjoy this doof and spend enough time in the forest, on mountains, by the ocean, or hearing birdsong. It’s an affront to what our bodies and minds evolved to enjoy and makes us healthy. Yet I think many people who grew up in our culture crave and covet it for some kind of ooey-gooey indulgence.

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• Countering my posts on garbage: Mulberries! →