The best of yesterday’s April Fool’s jokes

Any April Fool’s Day that NASA gets involved in needs a round-up.

It was a day of false stories involving organic food and the green movement. The best one was on Civil Eats, which claimed food guru Alice Waters would be releasing a line of frozen entrees at Dean & Deluca. Although the story was outrageous — the entrees are a plate with salt on them and a pamphlet on foraging your own food — the joke got Mark Bittman to bite. Also in the “serious celebrity releases wacky product” category was the green magazine Ecorazzi announcing the release of Al Gore’s organic line of food include his “special” vegan nubs.

Whole Foods garnered the most publicity for its pitch-perfect parody of itself, claiming there was a sale on “organic air” for only $6.99 and a money-saving recipe for brewing your own wine in a bathtub.

Ben & Jerry’s prank had a message. It involved an entire Web site and a fictitious company called CyCLONE Diary offering “delicious, nutritious milk, 100 percent from clones!” Now the bottom of the Web site includes a link to Ben & Jerry’s activism page on taking action to stop cloned food.

The Charlotte Observer had a travel article on “spabecues” where people go for bacon facials, raw bacon eyes masks and rubbing lard all over their bodies. They quote the owner as saying she wants North Carolina to be to pork what Napa Valley is to wine, and backs up her unique treatments by saying, “Ever seen a pig with wrinkles?”

Then there’s Giant Cheetos. If Jumbo Krispies can be a real product, who’s to say stoners, college students and out-of-shape bloggers won’t buy Cheetos “the size of golf balls”? Yes, the release is dated April 1 but the more I read about them, the more I’m convinced it’s a real product. So keep on the look-out for “Chester Cheetah-created” giant Cheetos.