The Universal Label
Works for any grocery or non-grocery. Even thyme is just H and time.
Works for any grocery or non-grocery. Even thyme is just H and time.
All matter in the universe (heavier than lithium-7) was created through nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms inside stars over the 13.8 billion years that have gone by since the Big Bang. A detailed explanation (for the lay person) of this process is available in this article about Making Atoms.
From this article (and from the wiki article on Big Bang) it is clear that our universe began not only with hydrogen. Although the majority of atoms produced by the Big Bang were hydrogen, lots of helium and traces of lithium were also produced. Actually about 25% of the non-dark mass in the universe comes from helium created shortly after the Big Bang. (See also the later comic 2723: Outdated Periodic Table about which atoms were around after the Big Bang).
In stars, however, helium is also created directly from hydrogen atoms. So it would have been enough to just start out with hydrogen in the early universe. Given enough time, all the other elements would have been created inside these originally hydrogen-only stars. To make elements heavier than helium some of the elements created by hydrogen, will have to fuse subsequentially. And in order to make elements heavier than iron, a supernova explosion is needed. But in either case it is still products of hydrogen that fuse together.
In many countries, food products must have their ingredients displayed somewhere on their packaging. Because all the ingredients in any food are either hydrogen or heavier atoms created through stellar nuclear fusion from hydrogen over time, the ingredients of any items can technically be described fully as only being made from hydrogen and time. Thus this label would be the universal label. A pun on two of the meanings of the word universal. Any food is of course universal as in a part of the universe. But the label can also be a universal label as in a common label for all food or any other product in the universe, as well as the universe itself for that matter.
The title text first makes it clear that this works both for any grocery as well as any non-grocery, which as described above simply means anything else. It then goes on to making a pun on the words thyme (a herb) and time, as the two words are homophones. "H" is the chemical symbol for hydrogen thus completing the pun by noticing that the word "thyme" can be made by adding the letter "h" to "tyme" which would be a homophone even closer to the word time.
Randall previously made a joke on the fact that thyme and time are homophones in 282: Organic Fuel.
Later he made a reference to primordial hydrogen in the title text of 2778: Cuisine.