Save Our Food!

I'm a fan of good food. I like broccoli, lightly steamed with a little butter, real butter, and some real salt, not the processed stuff. I like real bread too, made from freshly ground wheat, golden brown, right out of the oven with butter (again), and a dribble of honey (also fresh and uncooked). What I don't get is why, when I buy groceries, I have to pay more for those things that are less processed, less handled with less ingredients.

I have long been disgusted with the marketing techniques that take a simple thing like bread and ruin it. I mean, can they just take plain wheat, salt, yeast, oil and honey and make bread? No, they have to take perfectly good wheat flour and take out the essential oil, (because leaving it in would mean that it couldn't sit on a shelf for six months) and they take out the bran, (because it makes the bread an unsightly tan color, but it also happens to be essential to the human body for at least a dozen reasons) they take out ALL the vital nutrients that occur naturally in the wheat kernel (because they hate us?, I don't know) they put back into the flour 13 or so artificially produced vitamins (which happen to be petroleum based. Hmm, I wonder who's making money on that one). Oh, and while they are at it, they add some aluminum. Yes, you heard right. They put aluminum into the flour as it goes into the machinery that processes the flour, why?, so that the flour won't stick to the machinery! (Unfortunately it doesn't prevent the bread from sticking to you.) After this they add gobs of gluten, (that's another word for glue) , BHT, high fructose corn syrup, mono and diglycerides, exthoxylated mono and diglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide, datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar, ammonium sulfate, dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, calcium propionate, and formeldehyde to name a few.


So, they've essentially ruined bread for me. Occasionally, when we are out of town and need something to eat, we will stop at a grocery store. There on the shelves is the bread. The whole isle has a sort of dead smell to it, but we press on because we are hungry. There in the back we might find a loaf of bread that has less than twenty five ingredients that looks almost real and we pick it up in hopes of making a sandwich. Then we look at the price. Wow! We nearly faint. They want twice as much money for this bread than for any other loaf on the shelf! Why? Because they left out all those extra ingredients? Because they didn't use as many pesticides on the wheat? Because they didn't take out all the good nutrients before they made the bread? Yea, I guess that sounds like a lot of extra work, so they have to charge all that extra money. Hey, what's wrong with this picture?

The bread industry isn't the only one playing this game. You find this amazing principle at work in cosmetics, milk, fresh vegetables, shampoo, and toilet paper among others. The less they do to it, the more they charge for it. It sounds to me like we have to pay them extra to leave well enough alone. If we don't pay them extra, then they will just go ahead and process the food extra, add dangerous extra ingredients, use dangerous pesticides, take out essential nutrients and have the most fun doing it. But if we are willing to pay them double the price, they will leave it alone. Am I crazy or does this just not make sense. And if it doesn't make sense, then WHY ARE WE PUTTING UP WITH IT!

We cannot put up with this. We have to rebel. We have to eat things that no one has touched, like a home-grown tomato, potato, or zucchini. I know that sounds rash, but it's the only way. We have to teach them that they can't do this to us. We won't stand for this kind of bullying. We have rights! Right? So, grow your own, eat it, and stick your tongue out at them and say, “So there! We are not going to take this any more.” Then you can hold your head high for a while, until they outlaw growing your own food, (which, by the way, is on the political table right now). But until something crazy like that happens, I'm going to make as much bread as I can, grow and eat as many vegetables and fruit as I can and come what may, I'll be as happy and healthy as good food can make you. (I do love good food.)

Live and Let Learn

Life is amazingly complex. There is so much to know about life that we cannot even keep up with all the new information that is being discovered. Books about almost anything become obsolete before they are even printed. We have the internet where we can be the recipients of instant information on any number of topics, but the field of information is growing so wide that it would take many lifetimes to take in just some of the things that have been discovered over last hundred years. So, what do we do then? What do we spend our time learning? Are some things more important than others? Who should decide what is important for us to learn?

One of the things that I consider before making a serious study of any topic is whether or not the information might be useful to me. If I can perceive that there may be some benefit from my learning, then I am motivated to learn and I retain what I study. If however, I can perceive no use for the knowledge then I would be better off not learning it. For instance, if I were a mechanic and I picked up a book on the repair and upkeep of carburetors I might find it fascinating reading and derive great benefit to my work from reading it. But if I were a beautician and picked up the same carburetor book I would retain little of what I read and that little would probably be misunderstood. OK, now imagine that someone has decided that all beauticians should learn to be mechanics and that they should all read that book on carburetors, and that if they didn't, their licenses would be revoked. Would you think they were crazy?

I have often wondered why people want to compel others including children, to read or learn something for which they have no use, no desire and no motivation. Always, compulsory learning is done with negative reenforcement. In other words, punishment is inflicted for not learning. This causes what I call anti-learning. People not only do not learn what they are compelled to learn but they learn to hate learning altogether. Often they shun those who try to make them learn and eventually even shun all learning. It's like being force-fed a certain kind of food. Force-feeding you would probably cause you to despise the food you were forced to eat, but it also might cause you to have a phobia of eating anything.

Learning is highly personal, even sacred. Like eating, it should never be forced. If a man was starving you wouldn't try to cram food down his throat. He would just spit it back out and end up hating you for it. It would be better to find out why he is starving and try to persuade the man to eat, on his own. Or even just to make the food available so that he could eat when he chose. Just so with learning. If people are ignorant or lack learning, education, manners etc. should we put them in prison and force them to learn those things? Should I decide which of your knowledge deficiencies require imprisonment? If not me then who should decide those things?

I love the story of the little Dauphin of France, heir to the throne of his father. As a small boy he was kidnapped and taken to a prison where he was carefully indoctrinated and taught the new, revolutionary way of thinking. His kidnappers forced him to recite the new doctrine so that they could use him to gain control over the country. After many months of this forced learning, the Dauphin was rescued. His dignity and convictions were still intact and the boy seemed unshaken by the onslaught. When asked why he did not give in to his persecutors, the boy simply replied that he was the son of a King, he knew that what they were teaching him was not right and that he would not yield under any circumstances.

In the end, we only learn what we choose, want and need to learn. Forced learning is anti-learning. There is no benefit derived from it except in gaining the certain knowledge that forced learning is inherently wrong. Eating is good and I love to eat, but if I had to eat everything at the hands of someone who told me what to eat, when to eat it and how much to eat, who then forced me, with threats of punishment, to eat every bite, it wouldn't take me very long to learn to hate eating as well as the people forcing me to eat. I love to learn too, but like eating, I'll do it myself, thank you.