The internet is the Wal-Mart of information. There's a lot of value there, but also an overwhelming amount of junk and plenty of things that can really harm you.

If there is an antidote, an antithesis if you will, of everything truly crappy about the internet, it is Maple Creek sausage.

Maple Creek, which is a local farm product in Alberta, Canada, is to mass-market breakfast sausage as a great bookstore is to the internet: there's way more of the latter, but that's usually a bad thing; and the former never lets you down.

Zero filler, spiced with a delicate, subtle touch regardless of which type of sausage. Short, fat links of deliciousness that baste in their own juices when slow-cooked. Made by a family-owned operation in Claresholm, Alberta with a limited reach and production output, and yet the same price as the comparatively awful chub you get from the big meat companies. The smell of it cooking will make you drift across the room, toes dangling an inch above the ground, elevated Fred-Flinstone-like by the trailing bouquet of fried delight.

I'm not sure you could produce Maple Creek sausage in the quantities that would make it truly "mass market." It'll never be huge and trying to capture every inch of shelf in the deli section. But... that's probably why it's good.

No one has decided to try to make it as cheaply as possible yet. No mega corporation has "loss led" its higher quality competitors into dissolution so it can grab as much prime eye space for a crappy, chemically plumped version.

I look for more products like Maple Creek these days: made locally, with care, with little concern for the yammering of the internet and shopping by mail.

Listen to computer algorithm suggestions for long enough and we learn to accept the lump of overspiced gristle we're being fed. Over time, as they dominate market share with inferior products but exceptional marketing, the price goes up, but the quality remains awful.

We forget how good sausage actually tastes.

Part of the problem, as I've mentioned before, is that there are no enforceable standards on the internet, no personal responsiblity. It makes manipulating public opinion much easier.

It was good news this week when Facebook banned 16,000 accounts used for selling reviews, mostly on Amazon. The stakes for internet companies are fairly high: eventually, if they allow unchecked behavior, the consequences to customers lead to complaints to politicians, which leads to more regulation.

But in the meantime, it becomes impossible to rely on reviews from other 'customers' when no one knows who they are. With online sites using direct-order fulfillment, with little kept in immediate stock for immediate supply, there is less requirement for careful measurement of local needs and preferences, less discerning supply, more reliance on a mass selection that buries quality, needle-like, in a haystack of mediocrity and ripoffs.

I'd like to think the arch-capitalists are right and the market will always correct itself eventually. It's not reality; it ignores the impact of politics, mass media manipulation, crony capitalism and the aforementioned internet disinformation. But it's a nice thought.

In the meantime, I have my excellent sausage. And increasingly high cholesterol.