The Food Police

It is a sad fact of life that people are no longer allowed to eat what they want when they want to eat it. As vegans foretell the death of the world at the hands of chicken-wing lovers, society has become increasingly blind to the true issues revolving around food. The culinary elite wish to turn everyone into organic-eating and vegetable-loving citizens without regard to the costs. Will these changes somehow be affordable for that single mother of two hungry children? If faced with the choice of an expensive GMO-free meal or some cheap fast-food burgers, which one will she pick?

The answer may seem obvious to you; however, the “self-appointed” food police simply ignore it. Their petty quarrel over the proper labeling of food pushes the real wars of hunger and poor working conditions of farmers to the backdrop. Due to pressure from the government, these farmers are forced to work and work at the risk of being exposed to extremely dangerous pesticides just so that they will be able to meet their production quotas and earn their subsidy. Yet, this is ignored and the food police continue to pin eating decisions on the individual, blaming them for their unhealthy eating choices They firmly believe they have some God-given right to tell everyone exactly what they must cook and eat. However, the real core of the food problem lies within the economy.

The Real Core

We need to focus on making cheap, healthy food and making sure that those who rely on school lunches can actually get the nutrients they need. It is not the food itself that requires reform, but the standards of the industry that call for top-to-bottom change. 

A Banana

No matter how many times you are told, you never listen. Never. For 5 minutes you may consider changing your habits but then you realize that might involve work and active thought and you decide against it. If you will not listen to renowned scientists and the environmentalists that are consistently antagonized, maybe you will listen to me. Yes, you who elect officials in the pocket of the logging industry that wishes to turn my homeland into a barren “desert”, chopping down my brothers and sisters like slicing through butter. 

You who carry around your didactic cloth bag because you are trying to “go green” while you simultaneously drink out of your plastic water bottle.

You, whose selfish act of buying that gas guzzling car just because it makes you look cool in front of your friends will cause generational change that you have never even considered. 

You are all guilty of this. Sure, once in a while you may enter into a phase of environmental fervor, but that is all it is – a phase. It will always fade into the background as more important things come up; let them chop down the trees you say as long as that new shoe store gets built in its place. You may form twisted justifications for the behavior of your species, but as always your fatal flaw is shortsightedness. You fail to open your eyes and look at the big picture. That shoe store will be long gone in a thousand years, and at the rate you are going, so will this planet. As the rainforests dwindle, the ice caps melt, and temperatures rise, I ask you to just consider your actions more carefully in order to preserve the planet for all of us. 

There Is No Unmarked Bread

            As I gaze across the listless store aisle, I see those lucky vegetables; the raw ones that have the privilege of not needing those painful stickers. As I glance to my left and my right, I see my suffering brethren; the bread that unwillingly shouts if it is either gluten free or GMO free. 

If we could rip these labels off and venture forth into the world unshackled, by all means we would. However, people can only look at us for our labels and not our actual quality. Consumers see us lined up, patiently waiting for their purchase, and they carefully pick which one of us suits their needs; we have no say in the matter. Meanwhile, those raw vegetables require no such inspection because people just stroll up and pick whichever one they want since they all look the same anyway.

Unlike us, they have “the option of being unmarked.” Also, every fruit will always be healthy, yet the same is not true for bread. Even if we are made with whole wheat bread and no high fructose corn syrup, some will say we are still not healthy enough. Many days I wish that I could just blend in and remove my labels, but sadly that day will never come. America is too obsessed with labeling everything in life be it red states and blue states or just plain old bread. The consumer constantly needs to know my entire life story from birth to shelf in order to determine whether I am good enough for their kitchen. Ironically, most of my labels end in the word “free” because consumers do not actually care for what is inside of me; they care for what I do not have. This deeply saddens me because we do not have the freedom to exist without labels unlike the vegetables. Often times, I just want to sit there on the shelf and not have anyone come and inspect me like an animal in a zoo. But since I am bread, there is no chance, because there is no unmarked bread.