By: Daniels, Friend and Sedlazek
There’s no doubt about it. Kids love frozen yogurt more than disobeying their parents, and in a county with almost 100,000 minors, it should come as no surprise that there might be one or two rival locations battling to control kids’ taste buds. You’d think something as delicate as frozen yogurt would be magically immune to the American tradition of gut-busting extravagance.
You’d be wrong.
Recently, the fro-yo emporium Sweet Frog opened up a new location in Leesburg, right off of route 7. Now there are three eateries that serve exclusively frozen yogurt within the town, which barely covers 12 square miles, and three others who sells it alongside ice cream. That means the average person, who jogs roughly a 10 minute mile, could cancel out an entire workout as it happens by eating frozen yogurt every 20 minutes. Local hero John Dooney could sample a new breed of sub-zero fermented milk every 10 minutes!
If one were to estimate the number of fro-yo dispensaries across the modestly large span of Loudoun County, he would guess six, maybe seven. Wrong. But don’t feel bad, you and 100 other surveyed students made the same error. In fact, the average Tuscarora high school student believes there are 57% less lactose delicatessens than there actually are. From the tip top of Virginia to the foothills of Reston, there are 21 different locations in Loudoun County, 12 of which are so new that they haven’t been listed on Google Maps.
This ridiculous quantity of yogurt raises quite a few questions: Why is this icy form of dairy so popular? Is this trend a threat to the local economy? Will anyone resist this onslaught of intolerance–lactose intolerance?
Whenever one notices a fad growing at an alarming rate, whether it be “Call Me Maybe,” frozen yogurt, or fascism, it’s only natural to glance at it over one’s shoulder in curious fear. When, according to a recent polling, the students of Tuscarora prefer frozen yogurt to ice cream, which is as important to American culture as baseball, apple pie, and Fox News, true patriots can’t help but be more than a little uneasy.
America is a land of excess, and we’re proud of our Double Gulps, Hummers, and large population below the poverty line. But more importantly, America is a land of fatties. More than one third of the adult population is obese, and almost half of the US will be obese within two decades. But, the winds of change are upon us, one to rip the male maternity smocks off this nation, and that wind cries “healthy.”
According to our crack team of researchers, 90% of all frosted yogurt bazaars are located within a five block radius of either a gym, health center, or a hospital.
One of the leading causes of this growing epidemic is that it stems from an even deadlier virus, one which has gripped this nation by its love handles and voluntary production of male maternity pants: Being Health Conscious. But why are young and intelligent Americans becoming so disillusioned as to worship this “health conscious” substitute as god’s gift to the blood-clot? One serving of generic brand of vanilla ice cream averages 130 calories per serving, so logically, frozen yogurt must have somewhere around -20 calories, Right? In reality, the equivalent generic brand of frozen yogurt has only nine less calories and actually has two more grams of sugar per serving.
America began its love affair with health crazes in the 1950s, presumably after prohibition was lifted and alcoholism took center stage. Old fashioned clips had liberal sprinklings of mustached men curling free weights in short shorts. The health euphoria lasted until people…got tired? (You have to remember, there was a war, the space race, disco, the ‘80s, and then all those boy bands.) People were tired of trying to grow wheatgrass in their living rooms, and opted out for a simultaneously more realistic and naïve approach: gorging on Antarctic lactose without realizing that it too builds love handles like Frank Lloyd Wright.
But this scourge of a dessert not only aims to slim out our figures, but our wallets as well. Local economics expert Michael Burnett said that the frozen yogurt industry in Loudoun County “could be [an economic] bubble.” An economic bubble is when an industry experiences rapid growth, artificially inflated prices, and an inevitable and “dramatic” crash. A bubble in the real estate market was one of the primary causes of the current recession, the worst since the Great Depression.
According to The Husky Headline’s top researchers, the Frozen Yogurt industry represents roughly two percent of employment within Tuscarora High School. According to Burnett, a healthy economy has an unemployment rate of between three and four percent. The collapse of this industry could cause Tuscarora’s economy to shrink by eight percent.
Empty your savings accounts, stock up on canned foods, build a well; it’s about to be 1929 all over again.
Senior Onslo Parker remembers the great Silly Bandz recession of 2009, the last great blow to the local teen economy. “Life was an everyday struggle. Hours of slaving away were spent just trying to put measly scraps on the table. I can’t imagine anything worse.”
Don’t worry, Onslo, you won’t have to imagine it. Frozen yogurt will soon make it a reality.
This devastating crisis is already visibly taking root, with iconic Leesburg landmark Razzel Dairy Bar being its first victim.
But this cultured lactose won’t just explode your figure and drain your wallets, now it’s hitting where it hurts: our stomachs.
There is only one gastroenterologist in the Loudoun County area, yet the same county has an immeasurable number of saintly citizens afflicted by “Loving Americans who Cautiously Tip-toe Over Sweetened Elephants In the Noticeably Tiny, Open, well-Lit and Empty Room And Never Caved to Eating Syndrome,” more commonly known as L.A.C.T.O.S.E. I.N.T.O.L.E.R.A.N.C.E..
We employed every journalistic tool at our disposal, but we could not find one Tuscarora student whose life is plagued by this epidemic willing to share their side of the story. Most experts theorize that there is collusion in the Fro-yo industry, where major conglomerates pay off any whistle-blowers under the table, or blackball them in the media (mostly Myspace.) Hitting dead end after dead end, we ultimately had to take off our Sherlock Holmes deerstalkers of investigation and slide on our trucker caps of shame and return home.
Though, our efforts were far from fruitless. Oscar Wilde once said, “By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.” If that’s true, then we might as well be Scooby Doo, because we just unmasked Frozen Yogurt.
