Junk Food for Thought

Eat It! is strictly trivia, so full of history and nostalgia that it's not recommended for children.

Sure, there are easy questions. Any grade-schooler knows which Hostess snack has a sponge cake outside and cream filling inside. (That would be the Twinkie for you nutrition freaks.)

But can you get this one? "Milton Hershey, founder of Hershey Chocolate Company, was so devoted to his wife that he brought her what every day of their marriage?" A Hershey's Kiss, fresh flowers, a box of chocolates or jewelry?

If you guessed flowers, you're right. And they say chocolate is a substitute for love? Mrs. Hershey probably would have begged to differ.

Monica and Eric Ash met four years ago on the job. As their company's two loudest employees, they gravitated toward each other.

Sitting last week in the family room of the Stonegate townhouse they share with two guinea pigs, they talked excitedly about the game that has reshaped their lives.

"It's been fun to do," said Monica, who is four months pregnant, a condition that has curbed her passion for chocolate, one of five categories in the game. "But you have to run it like any other business."

The game is reminiscent of Trivial Pursuit, which at the height of its popularity sold millions of games a year. Eat It! players go around a board, but rather than acquiring pieces of a pie, they compete for cards that represent the building blocks of a "redefined" food pyramid featuring cookies and candy and ice cream instead of grains and veggies and so forth.

Customers sitting Wednesday night at the bar at Monroe's in Alexandria tried their best to answer questions off the cards, certain they could match wits with a game about snack food.

Bartender Jack Vernon had trouble with this very Washington-centric question:

"In a letter composed by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams in 1785, he wrote, 'the superiority of [fill in the blank], both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America, which it has in Spain.' "

"Tobacco!" Vernon answered with gusto befitting a Jeopardy! contestant. Sadly, he forgot this was a game about food.

The correct answer, according to Eat It!, is hot chocolate.

Okay, so maybe you don't eat snacks or sweets aren't your thing. But if you know what comedic musician wrote these lyrics, perhaps the game and its pop culture allure are for you:

Don't want to argue, I don't want to debate.

Don't want to hear about what kind of food you hate.

You won't get no dessert till you clean off your plate.

So eat it!