Bagged salad is a necessary evil.

There are things I don't like about bagged salad. Like paying three bucks or more for 20 cents worth of lettuce. Like that weird smell when you first open the bag, probably from whatever they fill the bags with that isn't oxygen to keep the lettuce from going bad so fast. The fact that I could, if I really, really wanted to, buy lettuce and chop it.

But like I said, they're a necessary evil. Salad for me is a whim food, a mood food. If I keep a decent quantity of choppable lettuce around, it inevitably goes bad on me because I don't make enough salads. Plus, salad mixes with dressing packets in them keep me from having six half-empty bottles of dressing in my fridge. Half the time I make my own viniagrette anyway, so I -really- don't need bottles of dressing clogging my life.

But Dole changed up the packaging for their bagged salads recently, and pissed me right the fuck off in doing so. It's ridiculous. It's a bag of lettuce. Sometimes it's a bag of lettuce with some carrots or radishes or cabbage in it, but at the end fo the day, it's a BAG OF LETTUCE. You open the bag, you pour out the lettuce, you dress it, you eat it. It's a simple process, devoid of any food nerd street cred whatsoever. It does not, by any stretch of the imagination, need this sans serif nightmare:

Let;s start with the elephant in the room, the thrice-damned, motherhumping SALAD GUIDE. Each salad mix is rated from one to five in two arenas: mild vs. bold, and tender vs. crunchy. First of all, fuck "bold". Bold is for barbecue sauce. Bold is for taco seasoning. Spring mix is not bold. It's sharp. It's peppery. It's green. It's not daring. It's not challenging other lettuce to duels or parasailing.

Were people buying Dole bag salads and complaining that they were shocked by the boldness of the flavor? Surprised by the mildness of romaine lettuce? This country is just now recovering from a ten year long dysfunctional relationship with Caesar salad. We all know what Romaine tastes like. And it makes up 70% of these Dole bags, so we really don't need a guide.

And then, below the guide, is a suggested dressing. But they don't call it a dressing. They call it a "pairing". The bag above, if you can't make it out, "pairs well with Italian White Viniagrette, crunchy croutons, and crumbled bacon."</p>

Yes, that's right. Dole is suggesting to us that we put viniagrette, croutons, and bacon bits on a salad. I can only assume that Dole has a time machine, and plans to use it to change my entire fucking life, because that's what they'd have to do to make me need the information that you can put salad dressing, croutons, and bacon bits on a salad. I tell you, this brilliant, dare I say bold, culinary concept will revolutionize buffets and salad bars nationwide.

Banality aside, that's not a pairing. That's what you do because plain lettuce, especially plain lettuce that's been prechopped, prewashed, and encased in nitrogen-filled (I hope) plastic bags doesn't taste all that interesting on its own. It's like saying french fries "pair well" with salt. No, they just taste really bland without it. That's different.

Do not, under any circumstances, go to the Dole web site and watch the Flash animations with the bearded goon they hired to be the personification of the Salad Guide, by the way. Even with the sound off, I lost like five Sanity Points just watching him mime salad information at me.

On top of that, the new design is capital F Fugly. We all know how they shelve bagged salads at the supermarket. That's why all the bagged salads have the key information, aka What The Fuck It Is, in a band across the top. Just like Dole used to. That way, you can see what it is. Read what it is. Without turning your head sideways and peering through plastic.

I ask two things of bagged salad packaging - let me know what's inside it, and let me see when it's started to turn brown inside. This package does worse on both counts. WAR CRIME.