October 12, 1999
Health Food Homilies
By ALLISON ADATO
y husband and I recently moved to a new apartment
with an excellent
health food market
nearby. The convenience has improved our eating
habits (more soy milk, less Coca-Cola), as well as the way we keep
house (recycled-plastic garbage bags
and 80 percent post-consumer-waste
paper towels).
But now when I open a cupboard or
the refrigerator, on every package I
find snippets of philosophy, aphorisms
and quotations attributed to people
who lived long before the advent of
Tofutti.
For instance, a box of echinacea tea
bags offers this thought from Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "Nature never
repeats herself, and the possibilities of
one human soul will never be found in
another."
Our trash bags come in boxes carrying the following message: "In our
every deliberation, we must consider
the impact of our decisions on the next
seven generations -- From the Great
Law of the Iroquois Confederacy."
One side of a chocolate soy milk
carton has this slightly mangled quotation from Harry Truman: "I've
found that the best way to give advice
to my children is to find out what they
want to do and then advise them to do
it."
Another panel on the same carton
features a seven-paragraph screed
imploring soy milk drinkers to help
save not the harp seal or the rain
forest, but, of all things, the caboose:
"The caboose has been replaced by
little metal shoe boxes stuck to the
butt-end of every train." Running vertically up the same panel in tiny type
is this claim: "Remember the Monkees? Stephen Stills, Paul Williams,
Harry Nilsson and Charles Manson all
auditioned and were turned down."
Finally, under the nutrition facts
box is the image of an AIDS ribbon
with this appeal: "Please Be Safe."
Safe soy. Safe sex. It's a logical continuum, I guess. Nice of them to care.
And that's what all of this is: An
effort, either sincere or calculated, to
show that these companies care about
me. It's a harsh world out there, they
seem to say, full of pesticides and
virgin plastic and bovine growth hormone. But we, your groceries, will
take care of you! Buy us and we will
comfort you with quotations from early feminists when you're getting a
cold. (Really? No soul like mine? They
must be missing me at the office today!) And ex-Presidents will help you
raise your children.
When I think about it I do feel better
buying recycled products and more
healthful foods. But as for their recycled wisdom, the sagest words in my
kitchen are to be found on container of
plain old (nonorganic) cottage
cheese: "Discard after date on bottom."
Allison Adato writes occasionally about food and culture.
