You have probably never seen a serving size expressed in these measurement units before…

…unless you do your chocolate shopping at IKEA.

Dear Dr. Boli: I was in my local bagelorium for lunch yesterday, and they asked me what kind of bagel I wanted for my Lox de Luxe Combo, and one of the choices was “ancient grains.” And I was wondering what “ancient grains” meant, but the teenager behind the counter was stuck in trying to figure out what “lox” meant, and I didn’t want to burden him any further. But what do they mean by “ancient grains”? It sounds wonderfully intriguing and mysterious.

Dear Sir: It is not as mysterious as all that. “Ancient grains” is a marketing term for what the bakery trade used to call “day-olds”: that is, items that were baked yesterday but did not sell and are being offered today. It used to be regular practice to offer them at a discount, but the intriguing and mysterious term “ancient grains” has eliminated the necessity for such drastic measures.

Every parent has experienced that difficult moment when an innocent child asks a question that requires extreme delicacy in the answering. You are walking through the park, and you stop at a food cart, and suddenly little Algernon asks, “Daddy, where do pitas come from?”

After much hemming and hawing, you give the only answer that comes naturally to a parent’s lips in such a situation: “Ask your mother.”

But now, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and the generosity of our friend Father Pitt, you can answer that awkward question in sixteen seconds. That is all it takes to watch this candid yet tasteful video of the miracle of pita birth, as it takes place every day at Pitaland in the Brookline neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Little Algernon’s laudable curiosity can be satisfied without embarrassment to his parents and without trauma to his young sensibilities. And it is important to note that sixteen seconds keeps within modern educators’ guidelines for the attention span of an average American child, with four seconds to spare. Here is the film Father Pitt, with his usual flair for colorful description, calls “Pitas leaving the oven at Pitaland, Pittsburgh.” Visit the hosting page at Wikimedia Commons to see it in full HD resolution.

Dear Dr. Boli: People keep telling me I should get a hybrid to replace my 1973 Chrysler Newport. But I don’t want to get one until I know what a hybrid car is and how they pollinate cars. —Sincerely, Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy.

Dear Madam: The sexual reproduction of motor vehicles is a branch of biology outside Dr. Boli’s field of expertise. Fortunately, however, it is irrelevant to your question, because the word hybrid here is used in a metaphorical sense.

A hybrid vehicle is a failed attempt at a perpetual-motion machine. The turning of the wheels generates power, and the vehicle uses that power to turn the wheels. If perpetual motion were allowed, that would be the end of the story. But in spite of the best attempts of various legislators to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, they are still on the books; and therefore perpetual motion is not an option. Power must occasionally be injected into the system to keep it running, and thus your hybrid vehicle, which desperately wants to drive on electric power alone, also has a gasoline engine. This is the sense in which the word “hybrid” is used: a hybrid is like an electric car crossed with a gasoline-powered car by some ambitious technician at the agricultural extension agency.

It is not, however, necessary to use the gasoline engine all the time, or even at all. There is a source of unlimited energy into which all vehicles can tap, and it does not live under the feet of greedy foreigners who hate us. Gravity is freely available to all. As long as you drive downhill, you can make use of this free energy indefinitely. This one weird trick eliminates the need not only for the gasoline engine, but for the electric motors as well.

Healing Modality (noun phrase).—Any method of dealing with a disease or medical condition that does not actually work, as opposed to treatment or cure.

Dear Dr. Boli: My mom keeps telling me to eat my vegetables. But vegetables are yucky, especially after my mom has left them boiling on the stove for an hour and a half while she gets lost in YouTube and forgets everything she ever knew. Why should I eat them anyway? —Sincerely, Conor, Age 36.

Dear Sir: Dr. Boli was just taking a walk through a lovely stream valley where the Japanese knotweed is quickly strangling every other form of life in the landscape. His friends in the South report that whole counties have disappeared under a blanket of kudzu. Entire lakes are invisible under a gorgeous but suffocating carpet of purple loosestrife.

With these observations fresh in his mind, Dr. Boli believes he can give a reasonable answer to your question. You should eat your vegetables to prevent them from eating you.

Your arithmetic lesson for today: 10 ÷ 3 = 0.

What kind of arithmetic is this? It is marketing math, a separate discipline from the mathematics you were supposed to have learned in grade school while you were reading comic books under your desk.

Ten calories per container. About three servings per container. Zero calories per serving. 10 ÷ 3 = 0.

How can this be? It can be because government labeling standards assign a very specific technical meaning to “zero.” In the field of food labeling, “zero” is defined as “not zero.”

This sort of mathematics is very useful. It would not have got us to the moon—we must admit that. If NASA had used calculations like these, the Apollo 11 astronauts would still be on their way to the moon today, confidently expecting to land any day now. But it is useful in fooling the consumer into thinking that something is what it is not, or vice versa, and that is the essence of marketing. Government labeling standards mandate the use of marketing math because the purpose of regulatory agencies is to protect manufacturers from consumers, who might otherwise demand food that is what it is and is not what it is not. We pay our taxes to relieve large manufacturing concerns of that embarrassment.

Tricycles.—Simple mathematics proves that it takes 50% more effort to balance on a tricycle than on a bicycle.

---

Today is World Book Day. You could celebrate with a book.

Dear Dr. Boli: I keep hearing about how trans fats are bad for you, which sounds very unenlightened. But I confess that I don’t understand the issue. I can’t even figure out how fats have gender in the first place. What’s going on? —Sincerely, A Manufacturer of Margarine Who Had to Reformulate a While Ago.

Dear Sir or Madam: The “trans” in “trans fats” is short for transubstantiated fats. These are fats in which the healthful energy-producing substance of the food has been removed and replaced with harmful artery-clogging fatty acids, though the greasy accidents of the food remain. The demonic powers have been working on duplicating transubstantiation for the better part of two millennia now, but so far this is the best they have come up with, and government regulation appears to have stymied them on this front.

Dear Dr. Boli: What’s the difference between “four-wheel drive” and “all-wheel drive”? I counted all the wheels on my car, and I only came up with four. —Sincerely, Elon Musk.

Dear Sir: You left one wheel out of your reckoning. With four-wheel drive, the four external wheels are powered and move the vehicle. With all-wheel drive, the same is true, but in the event of a loss of traction, the steering wheel will get out and push.