Waiter, there's a uterus in my soup
01.08.2007
Please be advised that the text about to follow the text that you are presently reading is distinctly rant-like. While it can't be said for certain that it is, indeed, a rant, it bears enough resemblance to a rant that disturbed rumblings have been heard about the possibility of opinions being stated. It is to be noted that anyone with any kind of authority will not take any responsibility for the possible opinions proportedly stated in the following rant-like entity, and in fact are presently doing their very best to crawl into the underwear of their crack team of solicitors, even if they had absolutely nothing to do with anything of any importance at all, ever.
It's relatively common knowledge to anyone with functional literacy who actually leaves their home these days that North Americans have spectacularly bad dietary habits. Nutritionists nationwide have come to the conclusion that most North Americans apparently want to see how unhealthy a human being can get without actually dying. It's a tricky game to play, as many of us step over that fine line between "human trash compactor" and "dead".
For reasons completely unknown to me, policy makers and scientists, along with overprotective mothers and a shitload of personal trainers, have gotten it into their heads that making people feel like the human trash compactors they are will somehow get them to stop. The result has been quite devastatingly the opposite to what was desired. There's no easier way to guarantee a massive binge on Twinkies, HoHos, Big Macs, Sara Lee cheesecake, Fritos, pizza and beer, after all, than to deprive yourself of absolutely anything you think tastes good for days on end because other people tell you that you should.
It also doesn't help that we North Americans have strived to remove ourselves from the planet in every way possible to avoid actually acknowledging that the planet we live on is ugly, messy, bloody, and involves a great deal of murder and mayhem in order for us to survive in our lovely homes stocked with double-wide refrigerators stuffed to the brim with steak, veal, burgers, mangos, kiwis, bananas, cake, soda pop, and whatever other edibles tickle our fancy. The more we can pretend we live on the phantasmagorical happy planet of Zod, free of messiness and germs and living things that need to be dead in order for us to eat them, the happier we are shoving food in our faces queasy-free.
Therefore, I have decided that, instead of these silly public service programs designed to tell us how evil our Cheetos are, we should instead launch another type of program with the support of all food manufacturers and restauranteurs across the nation. Perhaps, just perhaps, if we knew what our food actually was, and what went into actually getting it to us, we wouldn't eat quite so much of it. Since we all know that it's a complete waste of space to make up some kind of pamphlet, which may possibly increase the popularity of origami but otherwise have no lasting impact, I propose we make the transmitting of this information far more visceral, more personal, more in-your-face.
I plan to open the first ever Living History of Your Meal Diner. When you order the 10 oz. steak, medium rare, with mashed potatoes and corn, you will get the 10 oz. steak, the potatoes, and the corn - along with a cow's eyeball embedded in your steak, a sweaty Idaho farmer, and a 5-year-old child genetically modified with newt DNA. Order the pat� fois gras, and it will arrive with a side of video footage showing a morbidly obese goose with a funnel down its throat. Chicken breast? It will only be served to you after you've plowed an acre of land or built a thresher engine. Broccoli? Sure! Just pour this litre of pesticides over your left hand.
Every restaurant, grocery store, and fast food joint will be regulated to serve all food with a dramatic representation of what we're actually about to eat. No longer will we be able to buy our salmon wrapped in plastic wrap, neatly filleted and free of anything remotely resembling the fish it once was. Oh no. From now on, when we eat a fish, we'll know it, dammit.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of these rabid granola-crunching PETA folks who feels we should all shrivel up and die to save the poor bunny from destruction. Life lives because it eats other life. If it didn't, we wouldn't be here. We'd still all be single-celled organisms happily floating around in gloop, sucking up the sun's rays and shitting out leftovers. No, this is all about dealing with denial. You are not eating a "steak" - you are eating the muscle of a dead cow. Yes, your vegetables are soaked and coated with toxic chemicals so that they will look pretty and won't have any icky bugs on them. That's life, and we pay for it. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and we've been running our tab far, far too long, pretending that the food we eat isn't actually what it is, but falls from heaven like manna. We're all so ready and willing to squeal and act self-righteous when we hear about the Chinese delicacy of boiled cat or watch someone chopstick up a squid tentacle, but nothing we have ever eaten is any cleaner, nicer, less bloody, less gruesome, or any less once alive than anything we turn our noses up at, just because it actually still resembles the animal from which it once was a part.
Maybe, just maybe, people wouldn't be quite so gung-ho for gluttony if we all had to get down and dirty in the real world every now and then, put some energy into getting fed, or pick that eyeball out of our dinner and eat it nonetheless, because it's food, and we're hungry.
make idle gossip (4 comments so far)
come hither - back off
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