humourous
Explanation
This comic imagines what would happen if we renamed all traditionally processed foods using the language of medieval alchemy, playing on public anxieties about "chemicals" in food.
The setup shows a presenter (possibly a politician or activist) proposing: "What if we renamed all food using traditional alchemical names?" followed by an exclamation of "My God!" from another character, suggesting this is being presented as a shocking revelation.
The comic then shows a series of common grocery items with absurd, alarming-sounding alchemical descriptions:
- "Fortified Flour: Enriched with green vitriol" (green vitriol is the historical alchemical name for iron(II) sulfate, which is indeed added to fortified flour as an iron supplement)
- "Beans: Bursting with oil of Northampton" (a humorous fake-alchemical name suggesting some arcane regional substance)
- "Broccoli: An excellent source of brimstone" (brimstone is the old name for sulfur, and broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables do contain sulfur compounds, which give them their distinctive taste and smell)
- "Tuna: Loaded with quicksilver" (quicksilver is the alchemical name for mercury, and tuna is indeed known for accumulating mercury in its flesh -- this one is both funny and genuinely concerning)
The joke operates on the same principle as the famous "dihydrogen monoxide" hoax, where water is described using its technical chemical name to make it sound dangerous. Here, the comic takes real ingredients in common foods and describes them using their archaic alchemical names, which sound sinister and mysterious. The humor comes from the fact that this is technically accurate -- these substances really are present in these foods -- but the alchemical framing makes ordinary groceries sound like ingredients in a witch's potion.
The title "humourous" uses the British/archaic spelling of "humorous," which itself is a reference to the medieval theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) that governed pre-modern medicine. This ties the title to the comic's theme of applying archaic scientific frameworks to modern realities.
The comic satirizes both the chemophobia that drives "clean eating" movements (where people are frightened by chemical-sounding ingredient names) and, conversely, the real presence of genuinely concerning substances like mercury in common foods. The tuna panel in particular works as both comedy and genuine public health information.