food, etc

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Fri Aug 9 07:07:32 PDT 2002


Daniel Davies wrote:
> > Then everyone got bored of being frightened about eggs and chicken, and
> > went back to eating the same stuff. Surely everyone must have been,
> > intellectually, aware of the fact that they were being fed 15% fecal soup,
> > but they didn't care. There is something more than rational going on here.

Carrol Cox:
> People are sort of tied up in the life they find themselves living at
> any given time -- & it is quite rational to hang on to that life. This
> connects with the long thread a year or so ago on changing people
> through argument. It isn't the time to find out about the danger in the
> food. It is the time every damn day to think about how one will get to
> the market, make all those fucking decisions, mess around. One has
> better things to do -- or it isn't even "better things": it's just
> getting along and taking into account (every day) diseased eggs is just
> one damn thing too many. One of a thousand damn things too many. Every
> day.

I started studying nutrition rather earnestly when I became a worker and a parent, not only out of a vague sense of doing the right thing, but because a sick child or a sick self is a lot more troublesome and time-consuming than reading a few books and putting what one learns and can confirm through experiment and observation into practice. It seemed only common sense to think that what one ate might have something to do with one's health.

I think the main problem for people trying to do this was not the work, but antagonistic social pressure. For many years I was derided for reading the ingredients lists printed on prepared food packages, or concerning myself with how long the meat had been sitting out (this being in pre-vegetarian days). As it happens I'm happy with the role of crank, but many people want to get along, which used to mean not thinking about food and nutrition except for the occasional cancer- prevention, weight-control, or sexual-potency fad. Maybe after Mad Cow this has begun to change. In general people will do very impractical things at the behest of peer pressure, even eat bad food and get sick.

-- Gordon



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