Price of Perfection | Earth

Posh Sauvage | Earth Issue

 

The Price of Perfection, the Cost of Convenience by Kristopher King

There is nothing more perfect than the beauty, diversity, and abundance of mother nature, and my own mother’s garden is a very good example.

It’s autumn and we’re harvesting most of what she sowed in spring. Deep beneath the rich, black soil are the potatoes. They’re a suede brown and smell of pungent, hearty earth.

Closer to the surface the carrots stand like candy coated soldiers, deep purple, sunflower yellow, pale blue, and the more recognizable orange, the only color I thought carrots could be.

Above the fertile ground, bright green vines cling tightly to their supporting sticks proudly displaying tomatoes of so many shapes, sizes, and colors that they look more like a child’s finger painting than real plants.

Statuesque stalks of corn stand sentinel over the entire scene. It’s truly beautiful to behold.

In the super markets of today I fail to find anything close to what mother nature can create. The tomatoes are all exactly fire engine red and the same softball shape and size. They remind me of the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, where one organism is taking over the entire Universe.

The corn is engineered to withstand repeated soakings of extremely toxic bug killers. If the bugs won’t eat it, why would we?

Most of the butter type products are petroleum based. I do not like crude oil on my breakfast toast.

Anything meant to be very white in color, such as sour cream, contains trace amounts of titanium. Really, titanium? Really!

The chicken parts have been infused with powerful hormones to make them huge, and soaked in arsenic to give them a pleasantly pink hue, the apparent appearance of health. Arsenic, Awesome!

I could go on for hours about the forty thousand choices on the shelves, made by about four companies, not much choice at all, but that journey is yours to take. Giant agribusiness is betting you will not be so intrepid. They are brave. They are so brave that the same company responsible for Agent Orange is taking over the entire food supply. The giant agribusiness companies think all this is good for profit. They are correct.

They also think it’s okay for cattle to be cannibals, and that profit is more important than people. They are incorrect.

I believe that WE THE PEOPLE must take responsibility for what we will eat and what we will not, for what we will buy and what we will not, and most importantly for our attitude about all of it.

Americans will spend five dollars for one liter of drinking water that, does not guarantee purity, often contains contaminants such as arsenic and human feces, comes in a plastic bottle, but sports an exotic name. The same amount of tap water costs less than one cent. However, when spending a little extra for produce grown locally with care, somehow seems extravagant.

One of the first life lessons we are taught is that “WE ARE WHAT WE EAT”! Do you want to be cheap, fast, and easy?

So the next time you’re deciding what’s best, consider the Enormous cost of convenience, and the small price of Natural PERFECTION

 
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“Now I see the secret of making the best person: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.” - Walt Whitman