Ed Said - A little food for thought

 

For some, weekly market days are a serious event. This is the day they do their weekly fruit and vege shopping, seeking out the freshest victuals that will keep them fit and healthy for many more markets to come. For others, markets are entertainment, interesting and often good meeting places. I’m one of the latter but many of the former I know refuse to get their greens from a supermarket citing price, quality and, of course, the health issue, a lot of which relates to pricing. 

Some produce looks, and is, fresher than others. As for price, there can still be a marked discrepancy between one vendor and another for the same product. Some believe, without any justification at all, that market produce is healthier and therefore better for you. Not necessarily so. I see produce marked eco-friendly, which means what exactly? Spray-free I understand. Organically grown, naturally farmed, hydroponic – these are all terms invented to attract buyers for different reasons though some claims are unfounded. 

Organic means grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation and meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products not subject to antibiotics or growth hormones. Truly organic farms should be certified organic and this is often not the case. I have often wondered why, without all the additives, organic produce is actually more expensive than the commercially grown stuff and often too pricey for the average family on a tight budget.

Back in the 80s when spray-free began to gather momentum, a pro-faction said they far preferred spotty, windfall apples rather than the colourful crisp ones on supermarket shelves and weren’t afraid of biting into the odd codlin moth. Noble sentiments but at the end of the day, the spotty apples are the least attractive and the slowest to sell. In fact they are now rarely seen at markets.

Then we have the GE brigade who insist they don’t want anything bred in a laboratory in a petri dish. I recall a waka-jumping Labour-to-Green MP, animal rights and health campaigner several years ago who coerced her teenager, in support of anti-GE, to proclaim on TV that he did not want to see a tomato with a penis. What shocking indoctrination for a Mother to inflict on her then 15-year-old son. 

The anti meat people were out in force on last week’s Sunday TV programme using plant protein to grow ‘meat’ in a laboratory. One point they made was the investment by billionaires Richard Branson and Bill Gates. I believe to them this would be little more than tax-free expenditure. In the end Kiwi foodie Ray McVinnie said he would rather eat the real thing. My question is: Why is it called ‘chicken-free’ chicken? Why do those who don’t want to know anything about the real thing still persist in naming it ‘chicken’? Seems to me they are clinging to their vegetarian ideals yet long for the smell, flavour and taste of real chicken.

Though not hatched in a laboratory our new breeds of fruit and veges come about by grafting or cross-pollination, as are our new grass species and are also resistant to various bugs, viruses and weather conditions. Is this not a form of genetic engineering? Looking recently at furniture I saw a leather sofa advertised as ‘Vegan Leather’. Words failed me. It was presumably cow hide as opposed to, say, crocodile skin, but basically where will this advertising farce end?

A fortnight ago on TV news we saw a program under way where scientists are investigating why the colour of fruit is different from it’s skin. For example, why, when a banana has a yellow skin, is the fruit not yellow also? How many millions of taxpayers dollars are going to go into this useless pursuit? 

Too much or too little of anything can have drastic and sometimes a fatal outcome, be it food or even exercise. We are told ‘you are what you eat’ but we can  reason ourselves into or out of anything. When it comes to food we generally do, working on the pretext ‘if it feels good – do it’.

Unfortunately few are prepared to bear the consequences of health problems, preferring to blame manufacturers, growers, educators and even the health system which is duty bound to try and save us from our gluttonous selves. 
Just MHO.

Rob