Remy Knows

Do you really ever know exactly how your food got to your table? Or, more importantly, what is in it?

I just love this cartoon from my "page-a-day" New Yorker calendar (and yes I know it's from September). It truly illustrates today's the Western-world's food industry crisis: we have no idea what we are actually eating! 

The consensus among most Americans is the same; everything looks good, so it must be good. Wrong! As in most facets of modern society, appearance is everything. After all, there is even the British TV comedy "Keeping Up Appearances." Anyway, the reality is that everyone is only paying attention to the 

aesthetic side of the food industry, not the production side. As long as the labels claim "Zero Calories" or "Sugar Free" or "All Natural Ingredients," the food seems as if it is worth buying. But if food doesn't have any calories or sugar, what are their substitutes? Artificially-manufactured chemicals? That doesn't sound like a good substitute to me. 

Although humans have been cultivating agricultural products for favorable traits for thousands of years, more recently, many organisms (plants and animals alike) are being genetically modified in laboratories. Some strains of corn, one of the most "unoriginal" vegetables, contain genetically modified DNA sequences that resist pesticides and weed-killers, so the corn can grow while farmers spray the area with harmful chemicals that kill everything else in sight. Also, corn has been so modified that it would not be able to reseed itself in the wild; the husks no longer open without human assistance. 

Here's a really informative article from the New York Times about the new breed of GMOs (genetically-modified organisms). It is so scary to imagine that we could be eating a "fake" salmon and not even know it! These GMOs really need to be labeled! If you know of a petition floating around please shoot me an email!

As in the famous words of Remy in Ratatouille... 

If you are what you eat, then I only want to eat the good stuff!