The Arrogance of Food, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #122
June 15, 2009 Mike Gold 23 Comments
There’s a documentary that opened in movie theaters this week called Food, Inc. The folks behind it have been doing the teevee and radio circuit, getting interviews and spreading their message that corporate America is making us sick with their industrial farms, their torturous animal pens, their hormones and corn-laden feed, and their mutant chicken breasts. That’s fine. Those are very good and very important messages.
The problem is, their pompous self-righteous delivery is obnoxious and vile. Yes, honest, when we look at a bucolic scene on a carton of milk, we really do not believe that Farmer Brown personally juked the cow and poured it into a bottle, no more than we think Sauk Chief Black Hawk was really a hockey goalie.
This is a technique that is common to the food and so-called animal rights movements. There’s a particular degree of arrogance that exceeds the norm of political advocates, and I don’t understand it. Sometimes their noses are so far up in the air I think they’ll drown in a light drizzle.
Political arrogance is a mistake a lot of political advocates make; a mistake I most certainly made when I was in my teens and 20s. The Food Inc. folks and their fellow travelers may have done a great job of informing the public – probably even an important job. But that doesn’t make them smarter than the rest of us, and they should stop acting as though they are the Second Coming and we’re the Jewish Roman soldiers.
Like virtually all Americans, I eat meat and vegetables I purchase from the local supermarkets. You may categorize that behavior as dangerously self-destructive. You may think I should only purchase food from healthy organic stores where the owner keeps his wares under the counter in a Grecian urn and claims to get his stuff direct from Farmer Brown, who does not use fertilizer or hormones, and not Agrazilla, who does.
That’s nice, but I can’t afford that. In fact, most Americans can’t afford that. A growing number of Americans can’t afford that. Even if our family saves the $85.00 we would otherwise spend on tickets to Food, Inc. – the price, of course, includes the mandatory anti-organic “buttered” popcorn.
By the way, we produce a hell of a lot of food. So much that we’re sending a lot of it to people who would otherwise starve. Their choice is between food that might be unhealthy but has been fed to hundreds of millions of Americans that are living longer than ever… and starvation.
No matter how correct the message, if its advocates pompously treat me like I’m a moron because I might possibly be making a few different choices than they do, then they’re not going to get their message through. Hopefully, these arrogant elitists will climb down off the ladder and talk to the rest of us here in the Real World.
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Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather show starts up Sundays at www.getthepointradio.com 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed the following Thursdays at 10:00 PM Eastern. Likewise, his Weird
Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants pop up every on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday exclusively at www.getthepointradio.com. The regular Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind rants continue every Monday and Friday on The Point podcasts, available right here at www.michaeldavisworld.com, as well as at www.comicmix.com, www.getthepointradio.com, www.zzcomics.com, and www.ravenwolfstudios.com. You can subscribe to The Point at iTunes by searching under “The Point Radio.”
Gold is also a regular contributor to comicmix.com, and edits their online comic book content. Check out the all-new GrimJack: The Manx Cat #1, now being solicited in this month’s Diamond catalog.
Martha Thomases
June 15, 2009 - 6:36 am
Mike, I haven’t paid any attention to the promotion for this film, so I can’t comment on the arrogance or lack of arrogance of the filmmakers.
However …
As someone who has eaten more than her share of crap over the years (and will no doubt continue to do so), I strongly support all efforts to encourage people to eat better and more local. As much as possible, I shop at the Green Market, because 1) I know I’m lucky to be able to do so and 2) it’s good for the economy of my region and 3) I like buying my food from people who raised it.
Sure, it can be at least as expensive as buying from the supermarket. That’s because, for the most part, the farmers pay their workers a living wage, in America. I’m in favor of that.
When I buy pork products for John from the Flying Pig farm, I know the pigs weren’t raised like the ones in Mexico that incubated swine flu. I’m in favor of that, too.
Also, the more we buy organic (local or not), the cheaper it will get.
We’ve shared more than a few meals together. We eat almost none of the same things (unless they are fried). Here’s hoping that doesn’t make me one of the food police.
John Tebbel
June 15, 2009 - 9:25 am
Food police? In this country their names are ConAgra and Kraft. If you want to eat something the combine isn’t selling you’ve really got to shake a tail feather, either in your garden or your source of trade credits. Sugar sweet but in the hands of a bearded boogey man? Throw up some tariffs and squeeze the corn a little harder. Canned crap go down a little better with some salt? Throw it in! Don’t have a stroke about it. Oh, wait, you will get a stroke about it.
I remember sitting with a New York opinion leader in a playground (now demolished) near the Union Square Green Market as he scoffed at the merchandise around him as “designer greens.” The stuff is better because it’s fresher than what’s in the supermarket distribution system and, while it’s available, May through September, we buy it. To do otherwise would be to curse my lying eyes.
Fresher is better; after it picks it starts to rot. First the taste goes and then the nutrition. In the winter we’re happy to have decent stuff in the supermarket. It’s cheaper and worth it. I can esp recommend the frozen stuff in Birds Eyes premium line, esp the baby peas. Had a supermarket system piece of broccolli in April that was better fit for scraping a battleship. After a summer of good stuff it’s tough to go back to the stuff that ‘s been on the truck from California and Florida, or, these days, a plane from somewhere in the southern hemisphere. If you would eat well out of a supermarket, it would best be in a place without a killing frost.
We’re at least a generation away from having the science and the longitudinal studies to know what the effect is of what we eat on our short lives in our one bodies. Last round of research on popular/advertised/expensive vitamins and supplements came back with the news they were all crap. Thank your lucky stars for the placebo effect.
Yeah the do gooders can be insufferable. The Devil’s got all the good songwriters. Wonder what’s the special tonight in Hell? My vote is for Kraft Dinner and Spam. Mmm.
Vinnie Bartilucci
June 15, 2009 - 11:43 am
As a rule, people who tell us that things are bad for us talk as if we don’t know. They speak as if speaking to children who can’t possibly understand what they’re doing to themselves.
Here’s the deal – unless you’re older than when they started putting the warnings on cigarette packs, you know damn well what they do to you. If you eat at McDonalds or any other fast food palace, you know damn well that enough of those burgers will do terrible things to you. You don’t need a well-meaning busybody reminding you. We know damn well what it will do, and we do it anyway. So shut up.
“God bless you sir,” says Drew Carey, “I almost had a moment of joy”.
The message and the goal is moderation. But we’re not real good at moderation here. We either indulge to excess, go cold turkey (usually because we’re scared into it) and then can’t take it anymore and binge, swearing to stop again in the morning. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.
Going to KFC once in a while won’t kill you, unless you have some very specific health issues, or they’re giving away free grilled chicken and you get trampled.
General McDonald and the Chicken Chunk Commandos are not breaking down your door and cramming the Big Macs down your throat. Advertising can be resisted, and choices can be made. The only way the Food Inc crowd can talk us out of our choices is to come up with better ones. Coming up with nightmare scenarios to scare us out of our habits only works so long as no one notices that the scenario isn’t coming true.
Marc Alan Fishman
June 15, 2009 - 12:40 pm
There is a delicious irony when these folks who are “greener than thou” get to talk down to us normies, isn’t there? If those who have the means aren’t driving a hybrid, buying the better lightbulbs, eating only the locally sustainable organic produce and meat… well… they’re just not trying hard enough. But as you say, American’s are living longer, are on the whole quite healthy, and the sky is still blue when I look out the window. Surely we need to take steps to be more friendly to the earth… but those who can’t afford the premiums to do that shouldn’t be penalized, reprimanded, and made to feel inadequate.
Does Hubert Keller stand outside a McDonalds to laugh at a family who couldn’t afford an appetizer at Fleur De Lis? Heck no. These “greener” products (food included) may taste better / last longer / make more ecological sense… but screw you… I don’t make enough money as it is. Should I go deeper into debt just to ensure I’m pleasing former hippies turned millionaires?
I’m all for loving the earth. But you know, until your organic hamburger and organic french fries (served with hormone free locally sustainable tomato catsup and oceanic sea salt) costs the same, or hell, even CLOSE to my big mac and fries? Sorry… I gotta save my money for comics.
Mike Gold
June 15, 2009 - 1:04 pm
John and Martha: My saying the Food Police come off as arrogant totalitarians is not at all the same as saying ConAgra and Kraft are great… although to be fair, weed smokers do owe a debt of gratitude to Kraft for Oreo Cookies.
I said “corporate America is making us sick with their industrial farms, their torturous animal pens, their hormones and corn-laden feed, and their mutant chicken breasts.” I also said “Those are very good and very important messages.” And I also said “The Food Inc. folks and their fellow travelers may have done a great job of informing the public – probably even an important job.” That hardly sounds like I’m on ConAgra’s payroll, and that ain’t going to get me invited for a tour of the Kraft campus the next time I take Martha to Hackneys (a standing invitation).
There’s always been an overabundance of lock-step thinking on the Left. It’s so absolute that Objectivists would gasp in admiration were they only capable of emotion. If you disagree with any aspect of the cause du jour, you are as bad as the enemy. Vinnie addressed the McLuhanistic aspects of my argument quite nicely. You don’t get through to people if you treat them as though they were stupid. If the Food Police keep up the Dialectical Materialism Follies, they will continue to be the same small circle jerk that, say, the comic book business has devolved into.
Such absolutism is elitist. As I said, a diet of Politically Correct food is financially beyond the means of the vast majority of people on this planet, and even a majority of people in this country. That doesn’t mean they should be forced to eat shit, but I’ll tell you: if you can barely afford that box of Argo Corn Starch, you really aren’t concerned about the self-righteous loudmouth on teevee who’s telling you that you are an evil person for buying a Whopper.
To paraphrase one of my old union brothers, “stop bitching and organize.” (Yeah, Joe Hill needed an update.) You think people should eat better food; fine. Organize some healthy food pantries in impoverished neighborhoods – right now, I’d say the closest such neighborhood is called “America.” Work to end tax gifts to corporate farms and to shift those funds over to healthy food producers. Find out which healthy foods are no more expensive than their unhealthy counterparts… and educate. You can start with the owners of the bodegas and the remaining mom-n-pop groceries.
But remember: the choice of what to eat is not the province of the Religious Right or the Self-Righteous Left. The choice of what to eat is ours. Up against the stove, motherfucker!
Alan Coil
June 15, 2009 - 3:14 pm
Like many others here, I know that eating better food will make me healthier. But convenience and laziness makes it hard for most people to eat better foods.
Genetically modified corn products exist for one main reason these days: the company that makes a GM corn gets all future rights to the use of that corn. This includes the financial rights. Meanwhile, no long term studies have been done as to the safety of these products. Because they are modifications of existing things that have been approved, the GM product is cleared for use.
Rick Oliver
June 15, 2009 - 5:49 pm
I eat my share of crap, but I don’t justify it by saying I can’t afford healthy alternatives. In general, the healthy alternatives really aren’t all that much more expensive, and quite frankly the majority of Americans should probably eat considerably less than they do now.
Live within ten miles of a CAFO for a while, and you might become less sympathetic to those who say they can’t afford anything other than assembly line meat, particularly if those folks are complaining at you via their brand new iphones.
For most of us, it’s all about choices.
Kyle Gnepper
June 15, 2009 - 6:21 pm
I have yet to see anything for this film, other than the current rating on Rottentomatoes.com (94%, apparently the critics don’t mind pretentiousness).
I can’t say I’m surprised the same people who look down their nose at so many of us in person do it in film. I’m not much for green living because I’ve honestly done well without it. My new girlfriend is getting me to buy more green products, but its not a high percentage.
I do agree with the aim of movies like this, I do. But as you mentioned MOTU “I can’t afford that” either. I actually priced out going totally green, and I would spend nearly twice what I spend on food. Until something happens showing me I can’t take Agrozilla anymore I’ll probably rely heavily on it.
Reg
June 16, 2009 - 5:48 am
Rick said.. “….they can’t afford anything other than assembly line meat, particularly if those folks are complaining at you via their brand new iphones.
For most of us, it’s all about choices.”
Boom. There it is.
Mike Gold
June 16, 2009 - 6:38 am
It’s ONLY about choice if you can AFFORD that choice. I’ve worked with a lot of Head Start families and have done a lot of community organizing over the years — when times were far better than they are today. Trust me, these folks don’t have the car to drive to the Whole Foods Market, let alone pay the exorbitant prices. (And, yes, the closest market to me is a Whole Foods.)
I’m not comparing the total price of PC vegetables to that of the chain supermarket. Imagine you’re a family of four and you’re unemployed, underemployed, or uninsured. These folks aren’t looking to just save a few bucks, they’re looking to make the rent and pay medical bills. My comment about Argo wasn’t superfluous: corn starch will fill you up and get you through the day. Eventually you’ll die of malnutrition, but you and your 300 pounds will probably live another decade or so.
My overarching comment, though, was about attitude. People shut off incessantly preaching holier-than-thou assholes (except, I guess, in church), so the message is counter-productive. I don’t know if the movie is like that and I didn’t suggest it is (odd that nobody here seems to have seen it yet). I said its supporters, while promoting the movie and / or the cause, are.
I stand behind my reply to John and Martha (and, yes, I love saying John and Martha): don’t proselytize… organize.
Vinnie Bartilucci
June 16, 2009 - 8:04 am
Morgan Spurlock took a personal tack in Supersize me, and did a fairly good job of keeping the message tame and sane. He even portrayed the alternate view, to a degree – the guy who has eaten one Big Mac a day minimum for several years, and the guy who had a “McDonalds diet”. But ultimately the message was “A man eats like that he is going to die…” and my response was not “When?” but “Well, duh…”
The thing that will make more of these healthier products available is demand. As each new trend becomes popular, more foods become available to accomodate them. The Wife has to eat Gluten-Free, and has been baking her own bread and other bread products for a couple years now. (She has a couple recipes for gluten-free brownies and blondies that are nigh-undetectable from the real thing) In just those few years, the number of gluten-free products have skyrocketed, as “gluten-free” has become the new black of the food industry. But all told, the majority of the breads available have the taste and texture of drywall, so she finds it easier, cheaper and more self-empowering to make her own. But they’re trying – more things are available every day, and eventually they’ll get it right.
I recall an episode of Penn & Teller Bullshit talking about food science, particularly about an African country who was talked into turning down countless bushels of grain and feed for their starving nation by a group of well-meaning busybodies because the grain in question was “genetically modified” and against what THEY thought was good and pure.
These people can’t and won’t delineate between types of experimentation. Any and all advences in science is evil and wrong. Tell that to the tomato, corn, peppers, and all the other fruits and vegetables that wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for experimentation. I guess they only count as “frankenfoods” if they were made by Americans in the last century or so.
Not to mention the Crunchberry, which according to one lady, is a real fruit, or at least she thought it was…
Jeremiah Avery
June 16, 2009 - 10:20 am
It is amusing when some of these Food Police talk about how these cereals are toxic to our children and the companies are bad for putting them out. Last time I checked, the kids weren’t stocking up on the cereal, it was the parents buying them. But I guess it’s not the parents’ fault for what their children eat, it’s the mean old cereal company.
I take the train to and from work everday in the DC area and on them lately have been these posters mentioning the hazards of giving livestock too many antibiotics. It’s informative and comes across as educational, at least to me it does. It’s when I see the equivalent of “You’re eating filth you moron!” that I just tune it out and feel like eating a burger in front of these people.
I agree with the sentiment above in how people will purchase what they can afford. My mother did what she could to make sure my brother and I ate well, but when a family pack of chicken costs less at a Stop&Shop than what is sold at some organic market, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what people will buy.
Marc Alan Fishman
June 16, 2009 - 10:42 am
As you say Mike… it’s about organizing. If there’s a way for an organization to provide the solutions instead of preaching obnoxiously to me, I’m 100% for it. The issue for you is more delivery than substance… Most all of us here agree that a cleaner, greener, better food supply would be great to have.
I hope I live to see the day the Whole Foods market opens next to Aldi, and family living half on food stamps can shop at either.
Vinnie Bartilucci
June 16, 2009 - 11:48 am
Oh god, is there an Aldi near you? I found out about these places when we moved to PA. What a sad and pitiable chain that is – no name brands of barely palatable foods that you can’t argue are fairly priced, but as good an example of “You get what you pay for” as I’ve seen these days.
The sole place sadder was a store that sold, so help me, damaged food. Water-stained boxes of breakfast cereal, dented cans, milk and bread with hours to go on their “best before” dates…the kind of groceries that proper stores have to throw away. Well, apparently they DON’T throw them away, they unload them to stores like this, or god help us, just lets these stores know what day they’re going to leave them them on the loading dock “For the garbageman”.
The really sad part? There were doing good business.
It closed down some time ago, hopefuily as a result of someone asking “What the hell are you DOING?!?!” It totally felt like dumpster diving by proxy.
Mike Gold
June 16, 2009 - 1:14 pm
Vinnie: Yet there are places in the United States — as well as much of the world — where those damaged foods you’re talking about would be welcomed as haute cuisine.
Vinnie Bartilucci
June 16, 2009 - 1:37 pm
True enough, and I thank god every day that I am far from that position, believe you me.
But I all but guarantee that just like my example in Africa, were that food given gratis to those who need it, there would be well-meaning busybodies pushing it away, saying it’s “demeaning” or some such term to give it to them, like the lady who gave Elaine the muffin stumps back.
And behind them would be the tired and poor saying, “You know, we don’t mind…” and they’d be shushed as one would a precocious toddler in church while the food is wretchedly refused.
Mike Gold
June 16, 2009 - 3:50 pm
I concur. Vinnie. Ask the starving dudes if they feel demeaned when they’re given some food. See if they’ve got enough spit to talk.
Rick Oliver
June 16, 2009 - 5:27 pm
Yes, there are needy people in this country and in other countries who will be happy to take food that organic purists decry as “toxic”; and yes, those people will be much better off with that food than with none at all; and yes, most of it isn’t really “toxic”. But there is ample evidence to suggest that our current agricultural practices are not sustainable. Eating “better” food is just as much about the exterior environment as the interior one, and if we destroy the environment that provides our food, we’ll all join the ranks of the needy, starving people.
I chose my wording very carefully in my original comment: “For MOST of us…” — and I stand by my original comment. For MOST of us, me make a choice to spend our money elsewhere, often on things we don’t really need.
And before you sink your teeth into your next cheeseburger or BBQ pork sandwich, or even your next grilled chicken, read up on where that shit comes. Google the term “CAFO”.
I’m not exactly without sin here — but I don’t tell myself it’s because I can’t afford the alternative, nor do I claim it’s because I’m offended by the snooty assholes who chastise me for my weakness.
Mike Gold
June 17, 2009 - 7:11 am
Rick, we’ve gotten way past my point. There’s chastising and there’s chastising. And not all decisions are weaknesses. There’s no guilt in my diet, except for the processed sugar, something you’ve been opposed to for many years.
I eat neither BBQ pork sandwiches nor cheeseburgers. When I want my food cooked, I go for BBQ brisket and cheeseless burgers, and I consider neither a vice. You eat chicken, and you don’t appear guilt-ridden. (Actually, you rarely appear guilt-ridden. That’s one of the many things I like about you.)
However, because of my traditional hostility towards corporate America I now prefer my food on the run. As Paul Kantner said:
Scarlet juices oozing slow – boiling in a human sea.
Is it human dinner you’re talking about?
Then slice me tender raw and lean
Where are the bodies for dinner?
I want my food!
I think after my tribute to teen-age death rock next Sunday on Weird Sounds Inside the Gold Mind (www.getthepointradio.com; Sundays 7 PM Eastern; replay Thursdays 10 PM Eastern). I’ll do a show about food. I’ll try to limit my Weird Al.
As should we all.
Vinnie Bartilucci
June 17, 2009 - 8:19 am
Limit Weird Al? OK, NOW you’re over the line.
Al’s new song “Craigslist” is up on YouTube
Mike Gold
June 17, 2009 - 8:35 am
Oh, I see, Vinnie. I wasn’t referring to the musician. My Weird Al is something… different.
Marc Alan Fishman
June 17, 2009 - 9:18 am
Now we’re really veering off point. Into an uncomfortable silence.
@Vinnie … I don’t buy much at aldi, but for the money ($1 a bag) the romaine salad mix is a damn good buy.
Mike Gold
June 17, 2009 - 9:46 am
Yes, My Weird Al often promotes an uncomfortable silence. Particularly after I advocate cannibalism.