Food Snobs and the Quinoa Hoax

I‘ve been eating quinoa for several years now.  Like most things I eat, it just showed up on my plate one day and when I didn’t whine about it, it kept coming back.  However, I had no idea quinoa was cool until I was given a free lecture the other night at a dinner party.  Apparently, quinoa is an “ancient grain” and the best thing since zippers on jeans.  It has more nutrients, phosphorents, vitamins and protein per weight by volume (or vice versa) than anything else on the planet.  It can fix migraines, heart disease and … menopause?   Its calcium content is beyond compare.  It has enough fibre in it to cure whatever ails ya.  It fights free radical, better than James Bond.  And probably if you eat enough of it you will see Jesus – if you believe in Him — or some hocus-pocus god from Uruguay (if you don’t.)  I learned quite a few things the other night, but mostly I found out that food snobs give me a shooting pain.

Let me set the record straight on quinoa.  It might be called an “ancient grain,” but first of all, it isn’t even a grain.  Google tells us that it’s not a member of the grass family; it’s an edible seed.  Plus it isn’t actually any more ancient than most of the regular grains, like wheat, that ordinary people have been eating ever since Grog the Cro-Magnon got tired of hunting and bought riverfront property in Mesopotamia — about 10,000 years ago.  And finally, Google tells us, quinoa comes from South America where it was the staple food of the Incas for thousands of years.  Everybody ate it.  They practically worshipped the stuff.  The question then becomes: if quinoa, is literally stalk and kernel above everything else ever chewed and swallowed, how come the entire Inca nation, including an army of 80,000, got their ass kicked by Francisco Pizarro and 170 Spaniards, one Saturday afternoon in 1534?  The Incas might not have suffered from migraines or menopause, but they obviously couldn’t fight very well with that muck in their belly.  For my money, I think I’d be finding out what the Spaniards had for breakfast before I started making wild claims about “ancient grains.”

Here’s the real meal deal on quinoa and most of the other trendy foods that have been creeping into our diet lately.  They’re food.  They’ve been around for thousands of years.  They taste good (if the cook knows what to do with them) and they’re better for you than 90% of the processed food you find on Safeway shelves.  That’s it.  You can make the same claims about an orange, a lamb chop or spelt the (actual) ancient grain of the Bulgarians.  Quinoa is no more or less healthy than any of those.   It has all that fibre, calcium, manganese, copper etc. in it because it comes in a bag – all by itself.  It hasn’t been processed to death.

What food snobs don’t understand is it’s not the foods we eat that cause problems.  It’s the adventures that food has to go through to get to our plate that’re bad for us.  The things processors do to food ought to be illegal.  Read the labels!  Honestly, when Wonder Bread gets hold of quinoa, there isn’t going to be enough food value left in it to keep a good-sized cat alive.  And when it finally makes it to the Munchy-Crunchy Snack Bar stage, no amount of “Vitamin C added” will be able to save it.

You don’t have to look any further than breakfast.  One of the “healthiest” breakfast cereals around advertises itself as containing something called fibre twigs and clusters of whole grains.  What the hell is a fibre twig?  Is it a small shoot from a wild fibre tree?  And, by the way, what’s holding those whole grain clusters together?  Magic?  People who eat this stuff spit on Cheerios.  There’s another “healthy” cereal on the shelf that doesn’t even call itself food.  The ads say it’s a “meal replacement.”   I’m scared to look at the list of ingredients on that one.  I don’t care what the claims are, in general, if you’re going to have breakfast out of a box, you’d be just are far ahead to eat the box.  Notice, most of the cereal ads say “part of a nutritious breakfast” and show a picture of toast and orange
juice.

This is the problem with food snobs.  They think there’s something wrong with toast and jam.  They’ll kick people out of the way to get at clusters of whole grains held together by God only knows what chemical and turn up their noses at a scrambled egg – which has absolutely every nutrient needed for human survival (cholesterol aside.)  They also don’t realize that just because nobody’s ever heard of something doesn’t always make it better for you.  Sometimes, finding that new fruit or vegetable in the health food store is the result of refrigeration and the global economy.  It’s not an Amazonic cure for cancer.  It’s just an exotic version of the ordinary apple or carrot we all grew up with.

You’re Only as Stupid as the Warning Label Says You Are

Recently, while waiting for the cable guy to hook up my new HDTV, I took a moment to quit doing the man/guy thing of feigning interest in all things electronic and passed the time reading the Manufacturer’s Warnings.  It was an interesting read.  It cautioned me against doing all manner of dumb stuff to my new TV, like hitting the screen with a sharp object or operating the unit underwater.  While I can imagine going Elvis on a bad hockey result, I don’t know why anybody would want to watch the news in the pool.  How silly!

Of course, stupid product warnings have been around since the mid 1970s, when corporations started telling people their coffee was hot and not to drink the Drano.  They have accelerated since then to the point where just about anything you buy, these days, comes with a checklist of “thou shalt nots” longer than the Ten Commandants.  For example (and these are just a few simple ones)
“For external use only” – on a hair curling iron
“Caution: Do not spray in eyes” – on deodorant
“Do not use orally” – on a toilet bowl cleaning brush
“Choking Hazard: This toy is a small ball” – written in two languages on a
small ball
And there are a lot more out there that get a lot more complicated.

There is a collective idea that we have these stupid warnings because our society is under siege from bloodsucking lawyers who will do anything to initiate lawsuits.  This is not true.  Yes, our society is under siege from bloodsucking lawyers (this, by the way, is a general comment, not directed at any particular bloodsucking lawyer.)  However, we have stupid warnings on products because people are stupid.  I’m not talking about high profile Darwin Award stupidity; just everyday ordinary incredible acts of Dumb and Dumber.  You know for a fact that there’s some fool out there who will give the aforementioned small ball to a two year old and wonder how in the hell he got it in his mouth.  And this is not unusual behaviour.  People on bicycles, weave in and out of traffic, wearing nothing more than shorts, an iPod and a helmet, as if the helmet were a shield of invulnerability.  I’ve seen a guy staple up outdoor electric lights while they are plugged in.  People who are driving, race red lights while eating pizza, attach Ikea furniture to their roofs with twine and I’m not even going to mention texting the spouse to see what to pick up for dinner.

Get them out of their cars and they don’t get any smarter.  Recently, a family was doing some spring gardening, using a device called the Weed Wand.  The Weed Wand is an advertised alternative to the chemical warfare we’ve been using (and most cities have been banning, thank God) to control weeds.  What it is, is a snout attached to a handheld propane tank that shoots flames directly at the weeds and kills them by cremation.  (I’m not making this up; this is a real product.)  Guess what?  They set the house on fire!  These are ordinary people, but their actions do beg the question: who buys a flamethrower — even a small one — to tidy up the driveway?  When asked about it, the guy said, “In my opinion, it’s not a safe product, and we certainly weren’t using it in a reckless fashion…. I don’t think products like that should be on the market.”  You can read all about it here but my point is – it’s a flamethrower!

The problem is our society is basically benevolent.  We have eliminated most of the dangerous elements in our world and control as many of the hazardous ones as possible.  However, in our zeal to make a risk-free society, we’ve created a couple of generations of people who think this is the natural order of things.  They believe the world is a safe place.  They wander around as if nothing on this good green earth is ever going to hurt them.  Then, when something does, they think there’s been a malfunction somewhere.  I’ll grant you that they might not be as stupid as I think they are but they sure act like it.

The reason corporations put all those idiot warnings on their products is — sure as hell — somebody somewhere is going to find a way to poke themselves in the eye, lob off a finger or operate the unit underwater and electrocute themselves.  Then they’ll scream bloody murder that the manufacturer didn’t warn them about the dangers and run for the lawyers.  Sometimes, I wonder if our well regulated society has beaten the self preservation gene out of our species.  I’m not saying we should return to the days of dog-eat-dog/devil take the hindmost, but every once in a while, just a touch of common sense wouldn’t hurt.

This Blog is Not about John Edwards

It’s a foregone conclusion that John Edwards is kinda scuzzy.  His recent indictment is just icing on the scummy cupcake.  But he is a lawyer, so I will not write about him today.  Instead, I’m going to write about a person called Henry.  Henry is a purely fictional creation who bears no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead.  His story comes solely from my imagination and any similarity to real events or situations is utter coincidence and has no basis in fact.  If you want to read about John Edwards, you can do so here.  This blog is about something completely different: a fantasy fellow named Henry.

Henry is one of the 99% of all lawyers who give the other 1% a bad name.  He started out as a sleazy ambulance chaser who perverted the court system to translate pain and suffering into lottery-quality dollars for his clients.  He extracted huge percentages from these settlements for himself (tens of millions of dollars, actually) which propelled him to wealth first and fame after that.  From such a lowlife beginning, he went morally downhill from there.  Like most glib men, he believed in his own destiny, and so he entered politics.  It turned out he could be just as sincere on the campaign trail as he had been in the courtroom.  At the peak of his career, he came within a heartbeat of being within a heartbeat of being the President of the United States.  Henry sounded good to a lot of people; however, recent events have shown that he has no moral fibre to speak of and a soul that is weak and misshapen, if it exists at all.

What happened was, while running for office, Henry had an affair with one of his campaign workers.  I’m not going to talk about sexual harassment; for guys like Henry that’s way down the priority list.  Aside from that, this is nothing serious – tons of politicians commit adultery.  Way back in the day, John Kennedy made an absolute career out of it.  More recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger was caught with his metaphorical hand in the sexual cookie jar.  Power is a powerful aphrodisiac, and people traveling together in the endless cycle of photo ops, sound bytes and campaign promises tend to cling to each other.  Sometimes, this gets to be more than a spiritual thing.  In general, adultery for politicians is like jaywalking for the rest of us.  As long as you don’t get caught, nobody cares if you do it occasionally.

Fortunately, Henry got caught, and here’s where things get interesting.  Instead of admitting his mistake, apologizing to the tune of a couple of well placed press conference tears and skulking off into oblivion, Henry lied.  To be fair, Henry’s political career coincided with Bill Clinton’s, so it was only natural for him to think that lying about extramarital sex was standard operating procedure.  After all, Bill Clinton is still considered the wonder boy of the political left — even though he out-Nixoned Nixon when he lied to a Federal Grand Jury.  Henry probably thought, “I’m three times as charming as Clinton; if he can get away with it, why can’t I?”  And he was almost right.

You and I (and everybody else on the planet) know that lying is another well oiled perennial practice of politicians.  In general, most people don’t believe anything politicians say after “Good morning” – and, sometimes, not even that.  However, most politicians know when they’re trapped and it’s time to turn on the waterworks, cut and run.

Henry didn’t.  He has an ego the size of the Titanic, and it’s served him just about as well.  He decided to brass it out.  For the next three years, Henry embarked on a wild series of sincere denials.  Each one of these was blown out of the water as evidence piled up against him – including what somebody down at the National Enquirer might call a love child.  To date the count (depending on how you’re keeping score) is four or five heartfelt denials which have all proved to be nothing more than an ever-expanding bag of lies.

The moral of this fictional story is not that Henry is unfit to govern us because he had, what looks like, consensual sex with someone other than his wife, or that he lied about it.  The true moral is that the Henrys of this world are unfit to govern us because they fall apart in a crisis.  They do not have the intelligence and fortitude to analyse a situation, cut through the complexities, weigh the consequences, come up with an appropriate plan of action and implement it — all in the time it takes for allegation to become accusation.  Instead, they rely on spin doctors, media coverage, sound byte smiles and the mistaken belief that the public is stupid, with a short fickle memory.  A true leader would have fixed Henry’s problems long before they landed all over him.  Henry, however, isn’t fit to govern an ant farm and I hope he goes to jail.  He would — if this were real life and not just fiction.