It used to bug me a little bit because you didn’t see it very often (unlike people saying “PIN number” and “ATM Machine”). But now that there’s a whole store dedicated to it I have broken and vented outloud to my husband.
We were on our way to the Dr. in Franklin this morning. It’s a long drive and I needed to say something. So I started talking about my first-ever visit to Whole Foods, why I only stayed in there for 30 seconds.
I know that word usage has changed and I’m now outmoded and outpaced. But just as much as I refuse to call Illegal Aliens “Illegals” I cannot cannot cannot stand
Organic Food
ALL FOOD IS ORGANIC. IF IT WEREN’T ORGANIC WE COULDN’T DIGEST IT. IT WOULDN’T BE FOOD. IT WOULD BE ROCKS.
Yes, I know the lazy among us are sticking to using “organic” as shorthand for “food grown as they grew it in Little House On the Prairie days before we invented fertilizers and insecticides that made nutritious food available to the masses.”
I know they are using “organic” as a shield for their elitism. They can afford to pay nine dollars for a tomato so that tomato must be better for them, thus sheilding them from the woes and mortality affecting all of us cheap asses who buy the cheap “non-organic” tomato.
But honestly. Organic Chemistry was one of my favourite classes of all time. I stand by what I say. If you can eat it, it’s organic.
Eh, they use fertilizers and insecticides on organic foods. But the fertilizers and insecticides used are organic in the sense you use, which is how the food got to be labeled “organic.” They aren’t using (inorganic) petrochemicals. I certainly can’t afford to shop at WF, but I don’t think that the emphasis on organic farming and gardening is exclusively (or even mostly) elitist. The continued use of chemical fertilizers does, eventually, ruin farmland, and I think that’s a real consideration: in the long run, it isn’t cheaper or better for “the masses.” Vide farming collapses in many parts of Africa.
Elitist just doesn’t seem to be the right word. I don’t think the proper word has been created to describe the kind of people you’re talking about. The StuffWhitePeopleLike.com guy uses the term “white people”, and anyone who has read him for a while knows exactly the people to which he refers.
But, he’s being too cute by half and muddies the waters, and his readers end up arguing over the definition of “white people”.
No, I think I’ll have to coin a phrase myself. To be taken seriously, I should probably make it a latin phrase. Some combination of wealth, guilt, sanctimony, and an everlasting adolescent temperment.
What was this post about again?
Oh, yeah – organic food. I figured it would go out of style, now that they’re pushing it at WalMart.
I muddied the water with my aside about elitism. My problem isn’t the concept. God knows there will always be a market for feel good spending, whether it be on stuff that makes you feel good upfront like liqour or stuff that makes you feel good in the mind. Like “organic” food and tithing.
My peeve is the branding of such foods as “organic” when, by definition, ALL FOOD is organic.
Much worse than organic, is “green”.
The word, even in the context of environmental business and living practices, has become meaningless.
Organic tithing? That sounds like something we Methodists would come up with, but I’ve never heard that term before.
I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the term “food insecurity”. I understand the concept, but when people bend language (why not just “hunger” or “poverty”?) to promote a political agenda, nothing good can come of it.
Kat, these language posts are marvelous. You’re like a cranky George Carlin.
I thank you, but in my continuing crusade against redundancy I must point out that “cranky George Carlin” ought to be included in such a list.
Kat, in your honor, I will now mentally translate “organic” into “grown using only organic substances and methods” in my head. Of course, that will irritate me a bit (at myself, not at you), so the whole thing will become a pet peeve of mine, too. And so we’ll have something we can share.
You know what I’d like to see someone try to sell?
Organic salt.
You know there’d be a market.
My husband was raised by chemists. You guys can sit together on the crankypants bench the next time the subject of organics come up.
Sometimes “feel good” purchases actually do good. And shouldn’t we aspire to do what good we can where we can whenever we can?
I think the word that should be used is “biotic”…food grown and treated only with the aid of materials derived from other plants, animals, fungi, etc.
But, who wants “biotic food”?
For the record from this geologist, “petrochemicals” are organic. So, I will apparently join Kat and Bridgett’s husband on the crankypants bench.
Yeah, yeah — if it’s carbon-based, it’s organic. That leaves us with stuff like rion (non-carbon based) and some vitamins as edible non-organic matter. (I hear this rant every time I’m standing in the grocery line…)
Biotic would be better. Unfortunately, yogurt companies have bogarted the term as part of probiotic, which means to casual consumers “something to do with intestinal flora and pooping” and to the non-science inclined has something hazy to do with bacteria. Who wants to think about poop and bacteria when you’re trying to market HEALTH?! And GREENLINESS (next to Godliness and comes in better colors). Besides, dingalings would confuse biotic and biotech.
(I hear this rant every time I’m standing in the grocery line…)
I’ve honestly never heard it from anybody else. You clearly live in a more erudite area than I.
Maybe I should move to your town. Or at least your grocery store.
Of course then I would have to leave my town and my grocery store where the clerk once asked me how they fit four pizzas in one small box.
A box that said it was a 4-cheese pizza.
Wait — chemical fertilizer is organic? For reals?