Dancing -- well, shopping -- at Lughnassadh...

[felis_ultharus]

Happy Lughnassadh, to everyone who celebrates it :)

This old Celtic (and now neo-Pagan) harvest holiday has me wondering about food. I was looking for sponges, today, walked into a dépanneur and was about to grab what I thought were sponges when I noticed the label and realized it was (officially) a foodstuff -- some cheap knockoff of Twinkies, by the looks of it. It got me wondering what percentage of what North Americans eat is, in fact, food.

It's actually getting harder to find things to eat around her that hasn't been hormoned, MSGed, shaped from "edible oil products," trans-fatted, bleached, or otherwise tortured and tormented in a desperate attempt to cling Western Civilization's belief that it can bend and twist anything into whatever shape the creator desires.

Quite frightening that.

Comments

[infinitecomplex.livejournal.com]

That's one of the nice things about Vancouver - although the usual suspects packed full of MSG, nitrites and so on are still prancing around the grocery store, the whole healthy lifestyle thing that prevails here means that there are always organic, chemical-free options readily available. It's much easier for me to eat healthily here than it was in the UK, although I really need to do something about my microwave burrito addiction.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

There are some neighbourhoods in Montreal where it's dead easy to get healthy food. Problem is, St-Henri really is a bastion of the May Wests and the microwavables.

I could walk east to the Atwater market, or north to Westmount, but if the weather is extreme or I'm pressed for time (in other words, most the time), neither is really an option.

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. It's scary to look at ingredients and find that the clasest thing to the food you're supposedly eating is the flavoring...

Is it really surprising that we're all so unhealthy when you think of what we voluntarily put into our bodies.

What scares me the most is the people who don't want to know what's in their food because they wouldn't be able to eat it... isn't that a good reason not to eat it?

Well, I complain but I continue to eat these mutated monstrosities too.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I've been reading the rulebooks for a roleplaying game called Werewolf: The Apocalypse. In the story, there are three primal forces: the Weaver, the Wyld, and the Wyrm.

The Wyld creates new things, and is, fundamentally, creative chaos. The Weaver is Order and takes what the Wyld creates and weaves into creation. And the Wyrm is destruction -- it keeps the balance.

Then either the Weaver or the Wyrm went crazy, and the other followed suit, leaving on the Wyld intact. The Weaver is bent on creating an empty, dead, hyper-rational world without magic, while the Wyrm is bent on corrupting everything beautiful and wonderful, and finally destroying all life. The wyrm is behind nuclear war and ecological destruction.

The Wyrm in Werewolf controls the major corporations, and injects "wyrm-posions" into plastics, fast food, and regular food as preservatives, and so on. These poisons slowly destroy people's souls, make them small-minded, selfish, violent, and gradually mutate them into horrible tentacled monsters.

All this is just to say that when I'm in the supermarket these days, I have to remind myself that this is only a game, and that "wyrm-poisons" are just a fictional concept.

But damn, it explains so much. Maybe it's just that many of my neighbours at the grocery store do kind of look to being on their way to becoming tentacled monsters.

[ubergreenkat.livejournal.com]

scariest for me was finding these snack things that were like corn flour, kale, and spinach, but looked like Garden Gnome food and tasted like styrofoam with fake broccoli flavour... almost like the healthy thing had to be grossed-down to be sold. Oh, and they were called "Veggie Booty", which might have to become my new nickname.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Veggie Booty sounds like the title of a bad porn to me.

And who would simulate broccoli flavour? Has real broccoli become so difficult to find? At this point, I think they're simulating flavours on principle, having decided that real flavours somehow demonstrate a lack of artistry.

[melting-penguin.livejournal.com]

Just wait until you get a look at them in the Umbra!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Probably look like some horror not meant to be imagined by the human race. Like Gérard Derpardieu naked.

(And cool! You got your icon working!)