Posted on 06/04/2006 11:08:53 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
The New York Times reports that Wal-Mart, the bane of all limousine liberals and aging hippies, has entered the "crunchy granola" market:
Beginning later this year, Wal-Mart plans to roll out a complete selection of organic foods — food certified by the U.S.D.A. to have been grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers — in its nearly 4,000 stores. Just as significant, the company says it will price all this organic food at an eye-poppingly tiny premium over its already-cheap conventional food: the organic Cocoa Puffs and Oreos will cost only 10 percent more than the conventional kind. Organic food will soon be available to the tens of millions of Americans who now cannot afford it — indeed, who have little or no idea what the term even means. Organic food, which represents merely 2.5 percent of America's half-trillion-dollar food economy, is about to go mainstream.
With organic food about to become as "mainstream" and "middle America" as Ford Explorers, Kraft singles and "American Idol," how long before the so-called "elites" find it no longer has the same "counterculture" appeal as Volvos, brie and NPR?
LOL! That was dumb........ but funny. ;9)
When I was a little kid, we got our milk delivered in glass bottles to our doorstep by a local dairy. I remember the “cream” floated to the top and my mom would pour it off to a separate container. Hey I’m only 45 so I’m only talking the late 60’s here.
I an not against pesticides, hormones or preservatives per se, they have their place, but I’d like to have a choice and informed decision whether or not I want to ingest them or not. I think that doesn’t sound like good eating to me.
...get a rope....
Ummm...wow. Okay whatever. I think you may have enjoyed the DDT a little too much!
"...get a rope..."
What do you mean by that?
But then again my peanut butter and ketchup sandwich wasn't such a great hit.
What do you mean by that?
The salsa cowboy TV commercial? The one where it says the competition (used by the cook) was made in "NEW YORK CITY"?
One of the cowboys turns to the camera and says, "Get a rope..."
It's been on TV for years, and I don't even watch TV.
>So, which is more evil: ice cream made with orchid parts or made with ethyl vanillin?
If orchid parts are tasty I will like the first. Also I prefer real stuff to artificial flavors.<
Vanilla beans are parts of orchids. Authentic vanilla extract contains ~1000 components. I have worked with it extensively. It is a wonderful, subtle flavor, and few foods allow one to relish it better than ice cream.
But not all flavors are complex, whether they come from a plant or a reaction vessel. Eugenol (clove) is an example, consisting of a single compound. So, what is then "real" if the molecules are utterly identical? Do the eugenol molecules from the plant have a different 'soul' than the synthetic ones? I think not.
>But do not worry, I would never try to take your scientific ever-lasting Twinkies away. Bon appetite! <
Most Americans have never seen an apple--from an otherwise well-managed orchard--produced without a lot of spraying. They'd run screaming into the night at the sight of them.
Rancidity not only tastes foul, but the free radicals that cause it are not a good thing to eat, however "naturally" they may occur. Antioxidants are highly useful compounds.
Baking your own bread is fun, and I have baked hundreds of my own loaves...but not with the expectation that the bread will not dry out if not kept wrapped or not become a mold farm in short order.
Excess emotionality about food is a luxury. Historically, most of humanity in most cultures has struggled to maintain even marginal diets. Personally, I'll choose the evil terrible contemporary way of eating to the good old days of famine bread made in part with ferns, goiter and all the rest (including the sale of somewhat suspicious-looking cuts of meat...that tastes a little like pork...). I won't worry if the egg I am eating came from a well-adjusted chicken.
Putrefaction is a natural process, too.
>Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations.<
The title alone reeks of ignorance.
I found whole grain pita chips with cold expeller pressed oil at Sams and bought the two pound big bag. I also found pesto without trans fats. When you do your homework and care about the way your body reacts to these products, then organic and whole foods become penny wise and hydrogenation is pound fooish. What is the cost of a coronary bypass these days?
On the other hand, my sons have asked me when bowel movements became an olympic event(?)I explained that after 40, regularity develops a charm all it's own...
bttt
"Some fresh organic stuff such as strawberries and tomatoes tastes better .Mostly because it is grown locally."
The great majority of organic produce is grown by large corporations. The notion that some small farmer is growing a lot of it locally and trucking it to the store is false.
>To be sold as "certified organic" with the USDA certification seal, the food has to be produced and/or processed according to a defined set of standards that were agreed upon over many years of public debate that included the organics community. Some issues are still being debated, but the basic framework is pretty well set. "Organic" is less a state of mind, and now is a matter of regulations.<
Yes, but those regulations are defined by the emotions of people who find great virtue in what is no more than a marketing gimmick.
Throughout human history, most people have eaten "organically"--not very well. Now only people with the luxury of time and cash to play food games indulge in this hogwash.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
But organically grown strawberries and tomatoes have a much shorter shelf life and so they need to be grown closer to market.
bttt
>The great majority of organic produce is grown by large corporations. The notion that some small farmer is growing a lot of it locally and trucking it to the store is false.<
Some of the most manipulative packaging in the marketplace wraps around "organic", "natural" food, promoting emotional, nostalgic images of bucolic farm life. "Eat this and gain peace and inner happiness!"
It's quite entertaining.
I wonder how many of the people who buy this stuff have seen a calf pulled (and I do mean PULLED--fortunately, bovine females are rugged creatures) or a fruit orchard the morning after a late freeze?
Very interesting what you wrote. Still in real life the synthetic component might be less pure than we assume - for example supposedly healthier margarine can be contaminated with toxic stuff left from the time of manufacturing. Real life business can cut the corners, people can cheat or make mistakes.
Also we do not know so much. There can be unknown chemical factors like the dynamic structure/structural memory or overlooked components. Science explained only a small fraction of the universe and significant part of it can be wrong.
So I will take my clove as the nature made it, and yes I like to think that plants have souls. You and I are souls who have bodies, why not to grant little respect to lesser beings :)
LOL! Sophisticated Crows. I have hung them upside down and once I positioned one belly up wings spread, the critters ate around it.
SLB, you sound like me, only slightly more hardcore.
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