my organic gripe

Much has been made of the current fad for organic food. It is good for you, it is healthier for you, and it does not carry any genes or pesticides that can hurt you or your children’s children. We read a book (in my case Animal Vegetable Miracle) or watch a movie and change our eating habits monumentally. Out with the none-local foods, in with the organic free range grapes. So today after I spent a few minutes worshiping the god of great bodies and steamy rooms at lunch time, I chatted with my wonderfully-open-to-new -concepts woman about organic foods and dietary habits. This topic arose because she wouldn’t let me think it was funny that she wasn’t sick of watching Sicko yet – thx bebs, you know I love me some moral absolutism, no really.
So I said, “I bought these organic grapes the other day. Half of them were rotten, the other half thick-skinned and not completely mind-bogglingly tasty.”
She said, “I am sorry, that’s the risk of a natural life my dear.” (she really is as sweet as the sweetest organic grapes)
“Well, I remember how grapes tasted on the vineyard I helped out harvesting every year in fall, and it is totally different.”
“But that vineyard was in Niederösterreich, not in Upper California.”
At that point our conversation drifted somewhat off-topic as we considered our luck at not being born in the USA, but in Austria and Cameron respectively, where the food was still real, the mildew going strong and the common cold only half as common. When we got back to talking about organics in our present diet I ventured as to how it stands to reason that if a fruit looks healthy, is possessed of a nice color and crunches when I bite into it, as is the case with most mass produced genetically enhanced fruit and vegetable in this country , it is in effect also healthy to my system. At least as healthy as that half rotten bunch I had last week. But of course it is complete gobbledygook that a fruit is good for me just because it is nice and red, especially in our days of food coloring and genetic engineering.

I nevertheless mildly insisted on my point that even though Monsanto is hate-worthy just for being a multinational that is going to attempt to run the world through its food supply, the only way they can actually achieve that is through a good – healthy, crunchy, tasty – product. OK, there is another way, they can buy off some politicians, but that doesn’t happen, right? Not in this country of absolute political freedom in which your vote counts absolutely.

After talking about sweet things for a minute I decided to give the rotten organics another go, went to the food store, looked for the Organic Neon Sign, really telling me that everything else in that section is not organic but somehow machined, and who would want to eat something like that? and bought myself some white organic grapes from Cauliflower.

I went back to work, was reminded by a friendly Indian in the elevator that this is a lot of sugar for one sitting, washed my grapes in the kitchenette, went back to my desk, offered white organic grapes to my work mates and enjoyed the first one myself. It was bloody delicious and it tasted like home! So I texted my dear wonderfully-open-to-new-concepts woman the following: ”I just had my first organic gripe, and it is delicious!”