Thursday, April 24, 2008

Frankenstein food


With May looming, the anticipation of our CSA subscription and our own garden planting (that's some of the seedlings, above) is killing me a little bit. I just adore the simplicity of going out to one's backyard or to the farmer's stand up the street to pick up meal ingredients for the week. In stark contrast to that simple is best philosophy, some recent why-is-food-so-complicated discussions:

1. I just got this email from my sister:
OK, to two of my favorite label readers…I’m munching on some yummy Grape Tomatoes for a snack and this is what I read:

“Coated with food grade vegetable, petroleum, beeswax and/or lac-Resin based wax or resin to maintain freshness.”

So – either I have petroleum on my tomatoes or my tomatoes aren’t even vegan since beeswax or lac resin which is from the secretion of the lac bug are both animal byproducts.

I’m still going to eat my tomatoes, but how t weird could our food get?
So, two things. First: I immediately responded, "Yet another reason to purchase your food from local farms," to which she said, "They are local -- Four Seasons Produce in Ephrata." Dang. And Second: Wtf? Tomatoes, a natural whole plant food, not suitable for a vegan? Has anyone heard of such a thing? I know to avoid shiny apples and waxy cucumbers, but grape tomatoes?

2. On MotheringDotCommune, someone posted a link to this document titled, Guidelines for Feeding Broiler Litter to Beef Cattle. Apparently, feeding cows corn isn't cheap enough, as farmers have been recommended to add this collection of chicken "bedding material, manure, wasted feed and feathers" to their diets. Hilariously, there is quite an emphasis on using the correct mixture of dry materials with the bedding as feed in order to avoid mold. You know, so the cows won't get sick.

3. In vitro meat. I am not even kidding.

Seriously. At what point did our food become so complicated and weird?

7 comments:

Benjammin said...

Easy, when people got lazy.

Corman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Corman said...

Peta is all about the in vitro meat.

1 million for test tube dinners

Anonymous said...

Hey, if it's cheaper than wasting tons of land so that cows can have ample room to shit in, I'm all for laboratory meat.

Mikaela said...

ben -- is this really *easier* though?
crman -- yes, I heard. Like most veg*ns, I have a love/hate relationship with PETA. This is a perfect example of why :)
mdm -- i guess you're not the only one who feel that way...

Anonymous said...

Seriously -- you want to eventually end the killing of animals? Trust me, support laboratory meat. They'll always be poachers, of course, but they'll be in the vast minority.

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