Hi Ray,
I have been struggling lately with the
tension between wanting to buy only organic, pesticide-free, un-BPA poisoned or
hormone-injected food and the fact that it is usually at least 2x the cost and
we, like most families, are facing financial challenges. I find it
stressful to have to make choices like whether to buy the organic kale at $5.99
for 6 ounces or the regular kale at $2.49 for 12 ounces. In that recent
example, I just didn’t buy kale at all because I couldn’t feel okay about not
getting organic.
It’s like when my husband and I started only
buying Fair Trade organic coffee a few years ago. The question suddenly
occurred to us: if one batch of coffee is actually advertising its fair
trade-ness, what does that make the other coffee? Unfair trade?
Slave wage trade? Child labor trade? How can you justify buying slavechild
coffee when there is an alternative?
I face the same obstacles with other grocery
issues. Since we became
pescatarian a couple years ago, I’ve learned a lot about factory farming and
the unsustainability of animal farming the way it is done now. It’s hell on the environment; utilizes
dangerous chemicals and growth hormones; and is far from humane. I just paid $5.49 at Bourgeoisie Mart
for a dozen organic-certified, cage-free, vegetarian-fed, un-hormone-injected
eggs. The same day, I saw that “regular” eggs were on sale at Big Box Retail
Market for 99 cents. Should we even
be buying eggs in the first place what with the horrific state of the poultry
industry?
Fair Trade. Pesticide-free. Organic. Cage
Free. Non-GMO. Free range. BPA-free. No additives or high fructose corn syrup…
I want to do right by my family, but what
does that mean? Feeding them the
cleanest food I can find but not being able to afford college? And how do I know which claims are even true? I swear, buying groceries didn’t used
to be such an ordeal.
Best,
Patricia
Hi Patricia.
I had exactly the same experience of choosing organic or not with, of all things, zucchini. The organics were three times the price of the non-organics. I was completely unable to decide until I looked hard at that little tag. The conventionals came locally and the organics came from Mexico. Pears were the same. Apples were the same. Someone shipped apples into Washington State just to slap an organic sticker on them.
It's so damn hard to navigate this stuff, and it feels like a lifetime of acquaintances are looming over your shoulder at every choice. You're either killing the world or killing your children. YOU THERE PICK NOW, WE'LL WATCH. And it happens with every waxed cucumber or BPA lined tin can.
It feels that way because of how much should/should not is argued by our friends on Facebook. Facebook just got flooded with how that we're not allowed to cook with olive oil now. Something about unbounding proteins and carcinogens. So folks are switching to coconut oil at umpteen gazillion bucks a jar. And I really don't like coconut. We can't buy the kids Flintstone vitamins either. Saw it on Facebook too.
You know what it is? Galactic forces are aligning against us. Vengeful corporations and unseen institutions are playing chess match and we're standing around with checkers. The only way to survive is to navigate a very narrow, almost singly laid out path of tiny stones laid in a raging torrent of a river that is ready to sweep all hopes and dreams away, laying waste to a desolate and barren Earth. And it is all happening in the canned food aisle.
The grocery store has become the hardest Choose Your Own Adventure book ever. And trust me, I have played the hardest Choose Your Own Adventure. It was Badlands of Hark, by R.L. Stine. There were only two ways to get to the end, and you only survived being attacked by the final alien demon dragon if (*spoiler!*) you had accidentally eaten a poisonous tomato sometime in the third chapter. The back of the book had an address for the publisher that you could write to and get the codex for solving it.
Standing in the produce aisle is the same, with no hope that the publisher will be sending along a cheat sheet. Do you go organic? Turn to page 187. Do I go fair trade? Turn to page 39. And it doesn't matter because the Dungeon Master is a bastard and will have a three horned sl'arguth monster of Seti-Alpha 5 stumble around the corner and slaughter your party anyway.
Of course, I picked wrong, both in the books and at the grocery store. In the time it took to walk back and forth comparing prices, one of my resident climbing monkeys released herself from the seat and started using the cart as a gymset. This forced the other parents to look aghast at the scene, and take the opportunity to lecture me about how they have seen children hurt by falling carts and a little more attention would avoid concussions. I looked the concern trolls in the eye and shouted, "MY CONCUSSED OFFSPRING WILL CRUSH YOUR PUNY SNOWFLAKES." Or I would have, except I have to shop again this week.
So, when our planet is sent into turmoil due to our poor grocery choices, my thick skulled children will be able to navigate the much more violent wastelands of the future. Maybe that's the job these days, preparing yourself and your children for all possibilities in a likely violent and hellish 21st century panoptitopia. We are engaging in apocalyptic parenting: careening over the edge to an unforeseeable future, with caring and glee.
I guess the upshot is to do the best you can, and ignore the last post you saw on Facebook. If something doesn't pass the sniff test (i.e. shipping apples INTO Washington State), trust your gut. Then we just hope that whatever alien demon dragon they run into will succumb to conventional kale and Flintstones vitamins. Dammit we're still foisting Dino and the gang on the girls. Just wish they didn't have aspartame. That stuff is gross.
Cheers,
Ray
I had exactly the same experience of choosing organic or not with, of all things, zucchini. The organics were three times the price of the non-organics. I was completely unable to decide until I looked hard at that little tag. The conventionals came locally and the organics came from Mexico. Pears were the same. Apples were the same. Someone shipped apples into Washington State just to slap an organic sticker on them.
It's so damn hard to navigate this stuff, and it feels like a lifetime of acquaintances are looming over your shoulder at every choice. You're either killing the world or killing your children. YOU THERE PICK NOW, WE'LL WATCH. And it happens with every waxed cucumber or BPA lined tin can.
It feels that way because of how much should/should not is argued by our friends on Facebook. Facebook just got flooded with how that we're not allowed to cook with olive oil now. Something about unbounding proteins and carcinogens. So folks are switching to coconut oil at umpteen gazillion bucks a jar. And I really don't like coconut. We can't buy the kids Flintstone vitamins either. Saw it on Facebook too.
The grocery store has become the hardest Choose Your Own Adventure book ever. And trust me, I have played the hardest Choose Your Own Adventure. It was Badlands of Hark, by R.L. Stine. There were only two ways to get to the end, and you only survived being attacked by the final alien demon dragon if (*spoiler!*) you had accidentally eaten a poisonous tomato sometime in the third chapter. The back of the book had an address for the publisher that you could write to and get the codex for solving it.
Standing in the produce aisle is the same, with no hope that the publisher will be sending along a cheat sheet. Do you go organic? Turn to page 187. Do I go fair trade? Turn to page 39. And it doesn't matter because the Dungeon Master is a bastard and will have a three horned sl'arguth monster of Seti-Alpha 5 stumble around the corner and slaughter your party anyway.
Of course, I picked wrong, both in the books and at the grocery store. In the time it took to walk back and forth comparing prices, one of my resident climbing monkeys released herself from the seat and started using the cart as a gymset. This forced the other parents to look aghast at the scene, and take the opportunity to lecture me about how they have seen children hurt by falling carts and a little more attention would avoid concussions. I looked the concern trolls in the eye and shouted, "MY CONCUSSED OFFSPRING WILL CRUSH YOUR PUNY SNOWFLAKES." Or I would have, except I have to shop again this week.
So, when our planet is sent into turmoil due to our poor grocery choices, my thick skulled children will be able to navigate the much more violent wastelands of the future. Maybe that's the job these days, preparing yourself and your children for all possibilities in a likely violent and hellish 21st century panoptitopia. We are engaging in apocalyptic parenting: careening over the edge to an unforeseeable future, with caring and glee.
I guess the upshot is to do the best you can, and ignore the last post you saw on Facebook. If something doesn't pass the sniff test (i.e. shipping apples INTO Washington State), trust your gut. Then we just hope that whatever alien demon dragon they run into will succumb to conventional kale and Flintstones vitamins. Dammit we're still foisting Dino and the gang on the girls. Just wish they didn't have aspartame. That stuff is gross.
Cheers,
Ray
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