Eat Your Greens

7/30/2019 Eat Your Greens

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EAT YOUR GREENS!!! WILL A SALAD OF THE FUTURE STILL BEGOOD FOR ME?


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My ancestors must have sat and dreamt of the future. They must have dreamt of metal

horses and soaring men. They must have dreamt of a sunlit night, or maybe even

flying to the moon Well, in my world, the future just happened and it sometimes

feels like there is nothing more to it.

Once upon a time, men wandered through towering trees and tall grass leaves, seekingnourishment from the breast of the wild. They spent quiet nights in the glow of

crackling bonfires, feasting on fresh carcasses I live in a world of variety. A world

that can hardly keep up with its own pace. I live in a world where men have wings,

and the will of the tongue dictates to Nature.

How will those who are long dead and gone react, it they could see some of the things

that crouch on my plate at mealtimes? Maybe they might relish the cooling, sweet

taste of table sugar or the scent of freshly baked biscuits gliding through the morning

air. I wonder what they would say about the full-cream milk that we keep in the

refrigerator. They might also like the refrigerators and deep freezers, with which we

keep our food fresher for longer. But really, will the peaches and berries that danglefrom the treetops of my time do my ancestors the same good that the fruits of their

world did them? What unseen mysteries make up the attractive fruit walls of the

tomatoes that I so much relish? Two minutes from now, if my hunger were to drive

me to the coffee shop downtown and I were to order a fruit or vegetable salad, would

I be doing myself any good or perhaps any harm?

In present times, we live in a man-made world. The environment is just one big toy

tainted by human fingerprints. Look carefully at your frame and at your surroundings

the very flesh on your bones might even be artificial Our thanks need to go to

modern artificial fertilizers, for the juicy turgid leaves and fleshy midribs that are

characteristic of the cabbage and the lettuce, which my younger siblings despise so

much. In our quest to feed the exploding human population, we hardly take into

account the delicate and essential balance of the mineral requirements of plants and

crops. Countless species of plants are cleared from their natural habitats, to make way

for endless rows of spinach or beetroot. The favoured plants are left with little or no

plants with which to compete for water and soil nutrients. This may sound like an

inestimable advantage. But for the plants, a lack of competition also means a lack of

the extra plant roots and stems which provide adequate soil-cover for the prevention

of soil erosion which rids the soil of its essential nutrients. The mineral salts, which

the crops are supposed to absorb, end up being eroded. So, in an effort to make up for

the lost nutrients which the now sterilised soil cannot provide, we feed nitrogen,phosphorus and potassium to the soil in the form of NPK fertilisers.

But what about the iron, magnesium and even the copper requirements of the plants?

Those are ignored, because it seems the asparagus and the green peppers of today still

come as green as ever and the overwhelming increase in agricultural production

means that I can have more shreds of cabbage in my salads. Hurray!!!...

That, I think, is a very pleasant fact to know, if only we can ignore the fact that

between 1978 and 1991, vegetables lost fifty-seven per cent of their zinc an element

needed for the proper functioning of the immune and male reproductive systems.

After all, living in a world full of wandering infertile males is a small price to pay forhaving all those extra delicacies on our plates, isnt it? How about the fact that


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between 1940 and the present, vegetables have lost about half of their normal calcium

content? It isnt such a big deal to walk around with leg bones that have been bent by

a severe form of rickets; neither should it bother us to stand in front of the mirror

every morning and watch all our teeth gradually wear off, right? Oh! And who cares,

if our greens have lost a quarter of their iron content; we can do without haemoglobin

in our red blood cells, cant we?

It sounds absurd to think that such few flaws in our modern farming methods can

cause such drastic and unfavourable changes to the nutritional value of our foods.

Maybe, the statistics are wrong, dont you think?... The truth is, our flaws do not end

on the fields; they go much further. Our farming methods may be robbing our crops of

their precious vitamins and minerals, but what about the stories of long journeys that

the shy peas on the grocery shelves have to tell us? How I wish tomatoes could talk!

Then they could tell me about how they are gently picked from their stalks and neatly

washed, only to be shoved into the gloomy and yet hot back of a ready van. We

will probably never know how much the long rides to the groceries frustrate and wear

them out and how their not-so-comfortable positions just squeeze the vitamins outof them! The transportation of foods over long distances, has been identified as one of

the reasons for the depreciation of their freshness. Nutritionists believe that freshfruits and vegetables are more likely to contain the most vitamins. So what does this

say about the carrots and the cauliflowers that spend a night or two in the back of a

truck and suddenly find themselves on supermarket shelves in Cape Town?

We might need to make a few changes to our farming methods and the means by

which our delicate food sources are transported, but really, is that all? How about

ourselves? Our psychology and our habits. As a developing species of life, our levels

of superficiality reach ever-growing heights with every passing second. The

preparation of food has become more of an art than a necessary stage in the process of

nutrition. Under which of the six food groups does salad dressing for example, fall? I

would like to know. Because in our sweet-smelling mixture of shredded vegetables,

there is always that glistening presence of salad dressing, smiling foolishly up at us.

Yet all it does is increase the amount of calories in our salads and dilute the essential

vitamins and mineral salts present. In order to make our meals look more like a sketch

of a beautiful landscape by Picasso, we grind our vegetables, chop them and

sometimes, shape them into desired shapes, unawaringly exposing a greater surface

area of the food to oxidation and allowing for the destruction of constituent vitamins.

Life in the twenty-first century, often leaves one with little time for leisure. Afterleaving for work early in the morning, Mummy never returns home in time for the

seven oclock news. So she always wakes up very early to prepare the childrens

lunch and supper. When she is done, she neatly sets everything on the dining table

and then hurriedly leaves for work. The food normally stands on the table for about

eight hours, giving the vitamins more than enough time to decompose Finally, the

children arrive home from school. And since the main course is often too cold, they

place it in the microwave oven and immediately begin tucking into their dessert.

There are usually a few stewed carrots on the dessert plate, but their Vitamin A has

normally ended up in the sink, together with cooking fat in which they were stewed.

The mustard in the hot-dog always flirts casually with the tongue. The children just

like its attractive yellow colour which it owes to the sneaky Tartrazine. But whatMummy does not know is that the chemist who lives across the street refers to


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Tartrazine as E102. Mummy does not know how much the chemist loathes those

incredible migraine headaches that E102 is notorious for. And she keeps wondering

why little George always has an asthma attack minutes after eating his hot-dog.

Yes. Preservatives and stabilisers lurk in our canned peas. Amaranth, Potassium

Benzoate, Quinoline Yellow, Indigo Carmen and a hundred others. Silent poisons lurkin the tempting juices of our canned strawberries! Manufacturing industries interrupt

our television-viewing with messages about banana-flavoured margarine and freshly

baked beans in tomato sauce, when all the want to do is sell us some cancer and brain

damage

So, will a salad of the future be any food for you, or for me?

Yes that is what the doctor said. He even screamed at me: Eat your greens!!! They

are still beneficial for your health. Well, I actually went through the pains of

visiting a food processing plant and discovered that Vitamin C is actually added to

certain processed fruits before they are canned. It is also used as a preservative, tokeep frozen peaches and other fruits from darkening. So now, I am supposed to be

more than satisfied with the extra Vitamin C that is present in my canned fruits. I am

expected to be proud of the fact that I was conceived in the world of refrigerators and

deep freezers. I am supposed to smile because thanks to genetic engineering, the gene

that controls the rotting process in my vegetables, has been rendered inactive and my

vegetables can now withstand the rigours of transportation better But what should I

say about the fact that there is now twenty-two per cent less potassium, nineteen per

cent less copper and fifty per cent less sodium in my vegetables and fruits? Should I

lick my lips at the sight of an attractive vegetable salad bathed in carcinogens?

My food is supposed to sustain the breath in me, till maybe some man-made

catastrophe in the uncertain future wipes me off this planets surface. So why do

molecules of Erythrosine dance around in my fruit salad, ready to cause havoc in my

thyroid gland. Who can tell what poisons and toxins will be embedded in our foods in

the years to come? Should I be surprised if I put on the television right now and hear

about a deliberate food-poisoning in a war-torn country, that is claiming millions of

lives?

I can hear the furious fain clattering on the roofs above my head. Let me go pull the

curtains aside a take a peep at the falling rain Out there in the street is growling

yellow van, on its way to a place I do not know. The words SUNRISE VEG areinscribed on the side of the van. I can see a drawing of a pea pod on the glass window

at the back and the mist of thick black smoke oozing from the rear of the vehicle, as it

speeds off into the gloomy horizon. It leaves its misty smoke behind, to ascend

through the falling drops of water, into the unhappy sky. There, it will forge an

alliance with the pure rain and turn it into a sharp corrosive acid. Somehwere back on

the street side, from where the van came, tiny asparagus leaves are catching raindrops

in the wet brown fields. They will keep swaying in the wind, till the sky smirks upon

them and spits onto them that strong acid Only God know what it will do to them,

or to the people whose lungs will dilate in sweet anticipation, should those helpless

leaves survive, to wilt in their aroma, in the heat of the kitchen

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Eat Your Greens