Reminding why of how much depth is at Daily Kos is mrsgoo, who penned a very illuminating diary about mystery meats sold at Target. The diary scratches the surface of a larger problem in our food supply, and that is namely, we have loose definitions of what constitutes food. Follow below the Squiggly goodness..
The dear mrsgoo spoke of intestinal symptoms after eating "ribeye" steak enhanced with "up to 12 percent of a solution."
What does that even mean? It means they plump up and flavor pack their food with salt-it also means water retention, and in some cases illness and I will get to our methods of avoidance in a moment, but first let me share some real life horrific experiments with you.
Dateline 2010, my Wife loses her mind and decides to buy me a Hot Pocket like item from Aldi's. At the time we had a rescued kitty named Simba. (RIP) freaking awesome cat, but I digress..anyways, as you probably know, street kitties eat almost anything, so in my inability to get through this vaguely food like substance, and it's metallic taste, I offered it to kitty, (to my shame and now I know better). Kittikens did not eat it. In fact he looked at me as if to say, "WTF is wrong with you?" Now this is a cat who ate wilted lettuce with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, off of a floor, and he would not do anything but give me a look of disgust. (He also repeated this behavior later, with Jack-In-The-Box.)
Dateline 2011, my Wife and I decide to visit a place called Buca Di Beppo, a semi-national chain of Italian food priced into the future. She orders something called Chicken Limon. Might as well have called it Chicken Ala Salt. It was that bad. But bad does not mean fake, not all the time, so again we decide to share it-this time with the local homeless kitty population. There were some white and orange mixed tabbies that hung around the dumpster, so we sat it down. They approached. They examined. They looked at us sadly, and left. In fact, they never came back. Where they went we do not know but the so called food made them pack up and leave.
But THIS is not the kicker, not at all. The next day we return to see if any animal has touched it and to our utter horror and shock we find a procession of ants circling, but not touching, and doing what appeared-to be pushing other ants away from it. It looks like the ants literally set up a guard to prevent other ants from coming into contact with it.
We were gobsmacked, and did not return to Buca.
So what do we do? We go to Indian grocers, and buy halal chicken. Halal chicken is non-processed religiously purified meat that is pretty close to old fashioned farm quality. At least it works for us so far. Tastes much better too, and we feel good when we eat it.
As a general rule of thumb, we avoid American chain restaurants, and only eat at family Asian or Mexican places. Looking at rural whites, the Wal-Marters, we tend to find repeating patterns of bloated faces, and prickly personalities. Gone are the days of hospitality, replaced by surliness if not outright hostility in many cases. Which brings to mind my own experience, eating TGI Fridays. One week, since it was close, I ate there thrice and I began to notice something peculiar, I was angry.
I mean in general. Taxes, the government, my Wife's trips to Sephora. I mean it was an ugly version of me. My Wife notices, and by notice I mean tells me to get the fuck out and not return until my normal self comes back. So I go to a Pho place, which is Vietnamese soup. Frequently there are wonderful and natural spices and herbs, such as lemongrass and lime leaves in these soups. Not only is it delicious, I immediately feel better. I am back. Sanity returns once again.
So are Repubs rigging the food to make more Repubs? I can't say that, as I know that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What I do suggest is we start charting our personality deviations from norm based on what we eat. Let us do some experiments. This so called food is poison, IMO, and if you do not have access to diversity, and the clean food traditions that entails, you are stuck with grocery store food, most of which I will not touch.
If we fix the food, maybe, just maybe, we can cure both cancer, and conservatism.