Recently I was notified that pork was being added to certain foods under the title of “enzyme.” I remember the word “enzyme” from my school days but I’d be lying if I claimed to recall exactly what it is. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s one of those squiggly things in the cell along with the nucleus, the cyberplasm, the DNA, and the jelly. I was never good at science if you can’t tell.
In any case, looking at labels is not good enough anymore. How was I supposed to know that my favorite corn chip had pork in it? And furthermore, why do food manufacturers feel that they have to put pork in products and label it some scientific name that I have no way of knowing what it is. Do they think I’m stupid? Well, they’re correct but that doesn’t give them the right to fool me like this! (That’s right, I added an exclamation point. If I keep getting angry I may just go ALL CAPS on these guys.)
But who’s at fault here? No one is forcing us to purchase Cheese-ritos or whatever they’re making. Sure they taste fantastic and are more addictive than some street narcotics but we don’t have to buy them, do we? The problem is not in the prerogative, it’s in the programming. I’ll admit that I’ve allowed myself to be programmed to purchase processed food, singing the commercial’s jingles all the way to the corner store. Still, there’s something wrong about misleading people with such tactics.
What is processed food? According to my internal encyclopedia, processed food contains:
- One ingredient that has been modified and packaged for sale (e.g., milk, butchered meat), or
- Two or more ingredients that have been blended together and packaged for sale (e.g., pretty much all junk food, 95% of everything else)
Now, please take that 95% with a grain of salt (also processed?). My internal encyclopedia has a margin of error around 40% (and I can’t say if that number is correct either because of the margin of error). Regardless, that’s a lot of percent. When you go to the grocery store, everything is basically processed food.
I went through a phase a while back where I was only going to eat food that I understood the nature of the ingredients. That lasted, oh, about 15 minutes. I had honey, butter, and some nuts. I didn’t even know what a “hot house” was so I stayed away from tomatoes and their ilk. Also, the stuff that was pure was expensive. I decided to go the what-I-don’t-know-can’t-hurt-me route. The information superhighway, however, is making it hard for me to remain blissfully ignorant.
So what’s the answer? Ideally we’d all have small farms where we would grow our own veggies and fruit and animals and such. But most of us live in compact city environments. Even if we did have the land and such, we don’t have the knowledge of what to do nor the time to do it. Perhaps the farmer’s market? Well, if you’re a fellow Sabbath-keeper, you may find farmer’s markets a bit difficult to patronize. Some strange board of directors out in the universe somewhere has deemed Saturday as “farmers market” day. Off-day attempts at farmers markets leave you with the leftover wilted stuff and that lady who makes her own soap or some guy who whittles.
Maybe I’m being a bit too grim. Maybe we’ll find a solution that I haven’t thought of. If you have the solution, please send it my way. I desperately want to eat the way God wants me to eat. I want to avoid the bad stuff and stick with the good stuff. I’ll give up all my -ito’s chips if I could have what’s best for me. It may take a grand paradigm shift. It may mean we have to re-learn everything about food. But we can do it, right folks? Even if it takes a long time to do. Like they say: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. (This article does not endorse the eating of non-kosher elephants nor their enzymes.).
Written by Jason Salas
LAtimes.com featured an article by David Sarno called “Google flashes its new credit card app, Google Wallet.” In it, Sarno spoke to Craig Ochikubo, vice president at Broadcom Corp., a chip maker that supplies Apple, Google, and Nokia with computer components. Ochikubo is quoted as saying “I see this as a natural progression to replacing cash over the long term. At some point we’re going to say, ‘Remember the days when we carried paper in our pocket?’”
That’s pretty much all I can think of. But those are two situations that call for cash. In situation #1, any random guy who’s giving me a ride doesn’t care if I flashed my phone at him and said, “If you’re signed up with a merchant account and have a scanner, I’ll pay you $20 for the ride.” In situation #2, the hot dog vendor may be set up with such a merchant account and a scanner but (no offence to hot dog vendors worldwide) I don’t like to use anything tied to my ID to pay people on the street.
Let’s not kid ourselves, people. Our society in general loves the fact that no tangible currency trades hands. Why are we not asking if this is a good thing or a bad thing? Yes, it may make life easier, faster, and more convenient for now but is it sustainable? If the system goes down, what do we use for currency? Few of us have gold and silver bullion, even fewer of us have farm animals. Most of us have the same kinds of junk that most of us don’t want anyways. When it comes down to desperate times, we can’t eat our old furniture and electronic equipment.
