Does Dude ever interact with energy-intensive concepts such as refrigeration, climate, availability out of season or preservation? I mean if Pollan is that cluelessly rhapsodic about blue bandaids, I am trying to fathom what my inner giraffe would be doing in, say, Omaha in January!
DC
On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 9:56 AM, shag <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> so later on, as Pollan investigates Earthbound, a company that produces
> organic lettuces, he mentions some "contract" workers, a "crew of Mexicans,
> mostly women, slowly moving through the rows pulling weeds."
>
> What he notices, is not so much the fact that Earthbound's employees who
> operate "the baby greens harvester" as opposed to the stoop labor of Mexican
> "contractors". yeah.
>
> what he notices is that they are wearing blue bandaids. I have no idea why,
> they just are. In other words, I don't know why it is that so many have band
> aids on their hands. Pollan doesn't tell me. But his attention, and yours,
> is riveted on the blueness. They are blue, and also have a special metallic
> strip, so that they can be spotted amongst all the lettuce leaves as they
> pass by inspectors and detected by the metal detectors, lest a bandaid get
> into a bag of salad greens.
>
> but what i notice later is how Pollan's rhetoric works. He's making the
> point that a tremendous amount of energy and complexity goes into the
> creation of a freakin' bag of lettuce with hardly any calories.
>
> That complexity is contrasted the simplicity of eating lettuce. He, and we
> (he insists) eat lettuce and when we do we imagine it as a wholesome
> activity:
>
> "There are few things humans eat that are quite so elemental -- a handful
> of leaves, after all, consumed raw. When we're eating salad we're behaving a
> lot like herbivores, drawing as close as we ever do to all those creatures
> who bend their heads down to the grass, or reach up into the trees, to
> nibble on plant leaves. We add only the thinnest veneer of culture to these
> raw leaves, dressing them in oil and vinegar."
>
> Please pause. The veneer of culture is the salad dressing! culture as
> opposed to nature. Close to nature. Behaving like herbivores -- fucking
> thank dog I don't have to bow my head to the ground to eat or get on my
> tippy toes and crane my neck...
>
> Jesus Aiyth Kryst on a Broken Pogo Stick. It gets better:
>
> "Much virtue attaches to this kind of eating, for what do we regard as more
> wholesome than tucking into a pile of green leaves?"
>
> fuckifino!
>
> that's all i do when i think of eating a salad: it's wholesome. i feel
> like... a giraffe. a cow. tomorrow, i can be another herbivore. whole again,
> i can go on with life once more! until my next salad!
>
> He continues: "The contrast of the simplicity of this sort of eating, with
> all its pastoral overtones, and the complexity of the industrial process
> behind it produced a certain cognitive dissonance in my refrigerated mind."
>
> he goes on to condemn the current organic food industry for, basically,
> false advertising, for basically being just like the rest of the food
> industry, etc. etc.
>
> he doesn't like the literary genre of the organic food mart, what he calls
> "Supermarket Pastoral." That is because it is not true. If it were true, it
> would be OK. But what he doesn't like about it, really, is the veneer of
> culture slathered thickly over nature. He wants a thin veneer of culture
> drizzled over nature, like oil and vinegar dressing over tender greens.
>
> I hate to break it to him, but when i eat lettuce, I'm not fantasizing my
> spirit-animal, or hoping to get in touch one with my inner herbivore. I'm
> interested in the contrast between the lettuce and the tuna salad and the
> bread. Or, when I have a salad for lunch, it's cause I'm often craving the
> wetness. I'm not sure what it is, but I'll get a hankering for a big ol pile
> of crispy wetness. And I dump all kinds of hot spicy and tangy on it: black
> pepper, jalapenos, banana peppers, pepper cheese, blue cheese, parmesan that
> makes me pucker. There's nothing like a nice thin slice of practically raw
> cold roasted beef, piled onto some lettuce with blue cheese dressing for
> dipping.
>
> The last thing from my mind, is my secret life as a giraffe.
>
> honestly.
>
>
> At 11:46 AM 10/12/2008, shag wrote:
>
>> At 11:37 PM 10/10/2008, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>>
>>> First off, I'm annoyed by the cutesy term 'sun food agenda'.
>>>
>>
>>
>> heh. i had to laugh as I started on chapter 9, "Big Organic" of Pollan's
>> _The Omnivore's Dilemma_. It follows on the heels of a discussion of a
>> "beyond organic" farmer in VA, Joel Salatin. Salatin was consulted, Pollan
>> says, because he figured he'd get some juicy quotes; Salatin is known for
>> railing against the Organic Food Industry.
>>
>
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