Sanjay of Tampa, Florida writes in to ask: “Why is ranch dressing so popular? From what I can tell, people put it on just about everything and in such a volume that I have to ask: what is the fixation about?”

First, let me say that I did address this subject somewhat in an earlier post. The moral? Ranch dressing is the oily discharge from God’s anus.

But to answer this specific question, let’s take a moment to think about what we’re talking about here. To be honest, you may be asking the wrong person about the popularity of ranch dressing. Quite frankly, I find it to be one of the more detestable substances wrought from the human consciousness. However, even if I find it to be somewhere between dumpster scrapings and rancid horse semen on the food appeal scale, I will say that it’s popularity isn’t all that remarkable. First, let’s look at a few details of its history. Ranch dressing was developed by a couple living on (you guessed it) Hidden Valley Ranch near Santa Barbara, California. The guy who “invented” it served it as a dressing to his guests (apparently he had a lot of anger issues and took his hatred of people out on them through food). He started the brand Hidden Valley Ranch back in the late 50′s, and it’s popularity just grew from there. In fact, up until the 90′s, Italian dressing, that old reliable standby of oil and vinegar, was the most popular salad dressing in the United States. But once Americans got their hamfists on the creamy fatness of ranch…well, there was no turning back on its queasy mass-appeal.

So, back to popularity. The reasons for its suitability to the American palate is clear: a high fat content and the ability to blot out the taste of whatever you might be shoveling into your food hole. Two tablespoons of a traditional ranch dressing has 15 grams of fat and about 145 calories, where 94% of those calories come from fat. In other words, when you see some tub of guts at the Old Country Buffet sitting down to a bit plate of “salad” covered in ranch dressing, essentially what they are eating is a big plate of liquid milk fat held together by the empty calorie airspace of those pesky green things we like to call vegetables. Because the appetite for leafy, earthy things has been overwhelmed by deep fried cheese, it’s unsurprising to find that the only way huge swaths of the American public will even approach something that was once growing in a field somewhere and picked by some Mexican dude for fifty cents a day is unless it has been covered in creamy and vaguely rancid globs of fat…well, it certainly speaks to the America I grew up in and see around me every day.

Perhaps you say to yourself, But Sean, you are an enormous fat guy. Are you actually going to criticize people for their eating choices? Really? You’re goddamn right, I am. Let’s be clear: I’m not fat because I’m a disgusting pig who will eat anything put in front of him as long as there’s enough cheesiness to blot out the sad taste of failure and poor preparation that you’ll find night after night in most of your larger chain restaurants. Instead, my problem has always been the opposite: I love food, especially rich and complicated dishes. You know, the kind of shit that any sane person has at most once every couple of weeks. Instead, I tend to make a near steady diet of those kinds of meals. Coupled with a complete lack of exercise and basic loathing for self-improvement in all its forms — well, you get the picture. Having said all that, my problem has never been an incessant need to shovel liquid fat into my body with every meal. And don’t bullshit yourself: when they ask you if you want ranch dressing with your onion rings…YOUR FUCKING ONION RINGS…I’ve got to say that maybe it’s time to reevaluate your culinary choices. Christ, you could probably take an old diaper, stew it in the trunk of a car on a hot summer day, then cover it in ranch dressing, and some ignorant Walmart-shopping cracker would wolf it down with a side of basmati rice ’cause that Indian foods is good shit.

Sanjay, all you really need to know about the popularity of ranch dressing is this: Hidden Valley Ranch is owned and operated by Clorox.

Bon Appetit!!