Not Organic

I like peanut butter - a lot. If I could, I'd eat more of it. The problem is, that eating too much of this after your 9th birthday causes a disproportionate increase in the wet spot left after sitting on the side of the pool (if I'm not being too subtle.) I'm not a doctor, nor have I played one on TV, but I believe the technical term for it is glutius expansionus maxiumus.

Around our house, we're trying to eat healthier. Actually, we're trying to be deliberate about everything - making better choices across the board. The two main areas of focus (that I'm talking about) are our finances and our eating habits (and what we feed our kids). The finances thing has been a good exercise - we're living on a budget, trying to be thoughtful about every dollar and giving each dollar a name. This means that even money for incidentals - getting a drink at a convenience store, lunch with a friend, etc. is factored into the budget. It's difficult, but has been worthwhile.

In the past few months, we've been trying to do a better job making choices about what to feed our family. One of the things we've been experimenting with is baking our own bread. By "we" I mean "I" have been doing this. Yes, I bake. I also love power tools and make sawdust more than most guys, so on the masculinity Richter scale, I feel I'm still ensconced on the "manly man" end of the scale.

Why? It's better for the family and it tastes better. We haven't shaved our heads, drunk the kool-aid and joined the cult to the point that we're grinding our own flour (I think that's got to be a cult), but we might get there someday. Bread is one thing, but the thing we're really trying to remove from the pantry is partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. If you want to learn more about why this is evil from someone more "scientific" than me, check this out: http://www.recoverymedicine.com/hydrogenated_oils.htm

Here is my summary of what the science nerds are saying: partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is the sole commercial result of the combined work ever expended by the evil geniuses in the known universe. It takes something that should be liquid at room temperature and makes it a solid. Also, it makes something that should spoil last for years and years on your shelf. These two things come at a high price, causing all kinds of health problems - including increasing the likelihood of coronary heart disease - to the point that many European countries are considering setting a date for it's removal from food production. Those Euros! They're on the cutting edge of thinking about doing something dramatic!

One of my many, many, many, many oddities is that I was born with an overdeveloped sense of cheapness. As best as I can tell, this isn't a result of any cultural or ethnic background because as far as I can tell, I'm a WASP mutt. However, my cheapness was acquired honestly and like all things, at a price, but probably discounted.

This was most evident in my Granddaddy who used to stop, U-turn or slow down in the middle of busy streets or 6-lane interstates to pickup discarded shirts, hats, balls, flashlights, and who knows what all else. When we were visiting it was always exciting when he would come in the house saying "look what I found on my way to Fort Worth!"

My Granddaddy often had business in Fort Worth (maybe just when the grandkids were visiting) but I suspect just as often he did not. He'd drive 60 or 70 miles round trip - easy - because he heard someone had gas for $0.03 cents cheaper. If anyone dared mention that with the gas you'd burn to get there, plus the added time, that he probably wasn't breaking even, but that didn't matter. It was cheaper - that was the point.

My Grandparents lived across a busy street from a golf course. My Grandaddy was not a golfer and to the best of my recollection had little understanding of anything other than the basics - a huge expanse of wasted real-estate where people dress goofy and attempt to knock a little ball in a hole. Due to their abundance, they were a favorite target to find on the street and later sell in garage sales in egg containers by the dozen. The easy pickin's were in the yard. The greater challenges came as I said from the street. We'd be on the way to the cafeteria and if there was a golf ball on the other side of their 6-lane divided street, my Grandaddy would spot it, thread across the other two lanes and make a U-turn half a mile down only to come back to swoop down and make the grab. Where the heck are we going, isn't the cafeteria that way? Just a quick stop, I saw a golf ball. Oh.

My new found desire for healthy eating sometimes goes against my genetic predisposition for cheapness. We were at THE Wal-Mart the other day for a grocery trip and needed some eggs. They had their biggest display reserved for the blue, imitation-cardboard containers that were $1.37 ea. In addition there were the same eggs in pink containers labeled XL for more than that. Notice the ingrained cheapness: I don't remember because it was irrelevantly more. Also, they had eggs rich in something called Omega-3, and some cage-free eggs that were $2.97 per dozen! I remember that price due to the outrage of $0.25 per egg! If the unjust incarceration of poultry saved me $1.73 per dozen eggs - then I say "lock 'em up!" We found some others that had that mysterious label "Organic" on them (whatever that means) that were $1.24. The organic ones were cheaper! O bliss! O rapture!! They were tasty too.

In our culture we place a lot of value on labels. Think of value that brands alone have, separate from the products to which they are attached: Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, NFL, Honda, Yahoo!, Verizon, NBC, Google, etc. Beyond product specific brands there are labels that carry enormous weight either because of what they represent or by whom they are endorsed. Just think about how important - and by important I mean "valuable" the Atkins, Weight Watchers, or South Beach diet labels are for food marketers. If Tiger Woods endorses a golf ball, a car or a breakfast cereal - it sells.

Have you seen lately the lady from the Food Network that is suddenly on every conceivable package produced by Nabisco? Rachel Ray has usurped Kelly Ripa for doing more with her 24-hours than any other person in America. She's on all kinds off food packages, has her own talk show, I think she has a magazine, plus she's still on three or four different things on the Food Network. Apparently, she's a good brand, having come on very strong of late. However, I believe the label of all labels is just now emerging and will become more prevalent in the coming years. In marketing terms it'll make Tiger Woods look like that one guy...you know...that had his face on stuff...I forget his name. That label is "organic" and I believe it will become very powerful in the coming years.

We packed up the kids and headed to the other side of town a few weeks ago to the natural foods grocery store. They had a beautiful produce section (I find beauty in strange places) and had a big sign proclaiming over 170 Organic produce items. They had 25# bags of carrots for people who juice them, organic apples, and organic bagged salads. We wandered all over the store and found natural this and whole grain that. They had environmentally friendly trash bags and spear-hunted ground buffalo. Sure it was all fantastically expensive - but it's natural or organic. When I inquired if the prices were somehow mistakenly posted in Canadian dollars, the helpfulish clerk rolled his eyes and pegged me as an outsider.

Being an outsider in a whole foods store is like being a bull in a china shop. Even the other people who are shopping there look at you with derision with your empty basket and your three kids gnawing on dum-dums. They looked at us as if to say "dum-dum? dumb-dumb indeed." Apparently, shoppers at this store are better than us on at least two levels - one is that they eat healthy and protect the environment blah-blah, and secondly that they can afford to shop there. I look at their carts bulging with organic yogurt, $6.00 loaves of bread, wild-harvested deer milk, free range chicken breasts, and seven kinds of tofu and wonder who these people are? No doubt their grandfather came up with the name "Twinkie" for a cream filled mass-produced sugar-bomb like the kid in my fourth grade class, Jimmy Snyder. Some people have more money than sense I suppose. (no offense, Jimmy.)

We were blocking the narrow aisle with our empty cars when an older woman broke through our defenses. She was trying to get to a machine like they have in regular-people grocery stores now where you can grind your own coffee except this lady was grinding her own peanut butter. Grinding her own peanut butter!




This is probably a reasonable alternative to the partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that we are trying to get away from. However, the whole aura exuded by the patrons of the whole foods store was more than I'm willing to put up with. I've decided to direct my muted rage elsewhere and have chosen the Jif Peanut Butter marketing people who came up with the slogan "Choosy Moms choose Jif." I can't fault them for trying to sell their product with it's seven year shelf life, but you're talkin' 'bout my momma. Are they saying that since my Mom went for Peter Pan, Skippy or Acme brand peanut butter, that she's somehow making a lesser choice than choosing Jif? What about the nature nut at snooty foods? Is she somehow making a lesser choice? Did I want to run her over in the parking lot? Naturally. Of all the faults I found with her, I certainly couldn't fault her choosiness. But don't be talkin' 'bout my momma.