The Organic Dems

This weekend, I reread the "Omnivore's Dilemma," and then tagged along on my parents weekly trip to Fred Meyers. I lolly-gagged a few feet behind them, picking up product after product reading the personal statement from the company CEO, the "family-run businesses." I frowned, I felt jaded, these claims are false! How have I let myself naively believe in the small red barn on the front of my butter box for so long?

I lost my appetite, but only out of shame. I've always considered myself an educated eating, but have always had faith that my food didn't lie. I stopped that train of thought right there-- its food, its politics. Politics! In my mind, I saw the sweep of organic craze as the democrats coming back to power, making promises, painting a picture that I followed like a creed. I believe in Nancy's organic yogurt like I believed in Nancy Pelosi's energy bill. But these high-powered promises cannot be maintained, politics always get in the way. There are voters, there are consumers. There is competition, there is a supply and there is always a demand.

But, in our optimistic naivete, we still demand the impossible, and expect that no food producer indulges in a little political/business scheme here and there. As Michael Pollan quotes in his book, "Everything eventually morphs into the way the world is." I hate to sound like a pessimist at age 19, but I am not. I still believe in Nancy Pelosi and the democrats, and I still believe in organic yogurt and organic foods (and not just the way the USDA defines "organic"). I just say that we need to take it with a grain of salt, just as we do a political race. The promise of a "free-range chicken" as we imagine it, is realistically impossible if it is found in a chain grocery store (it would take more hours than there are in a day to pander to that kind of treatment on a mass producing poultry plant). Just as world peace is hard to achieve in one senate term or even two presidential terms.

Bottom line: If you vote (which is just as important as eating!), vote wisely. If you eat (which we all should), take it with a grain of salt.