The Sad Death Of 'Organic' (Morford)

[atommom]

I was a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the Rainbow" (I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.

But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning breakfast-sy light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.

And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.

You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well, exactly like Kellogg's.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2006/10/13/notes101306.DTL&type=printable

[soothsayer]

1. hey, good for them for offering organics!

[atommom]

2. ...but "organic" doesn't mean what it used to mean. Check out the article

[terip64]

3. I just get a little worried that it really isn't. Sad, huh? n/t

[TygrBright]

4. "Organic" doesn't mean much anymore....

...at least, not on the label of a new industrially-produced food-like substance from some folksily-named division of a megacorp.

Those of us who care about eating real food have to be very, very careful NOT to create another easy-to-market shorthand term to describe real food, or it will in its turn be co-opted by the Giant Marketing Machine to sell yet more industrially-produced food-like product.

So we are resigned to the jaw-cracking, somnolence-inducing descriptions like "locally-produced using sustainable agricultural models." Which don't exactly fit on a cute MadAve-designed label. But if you DO care, look for those jaw-crackers.

At your local Farmer's Market, hippy-dippy Co-op, etc.

Respect your food.

evangelically,
Bright

[AspenRose]

5. I saw "organic" chocolate sandwich cookies at a Safeway in VA

I was like, "huh?"

[Ravy]

6. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

My wife and I have this discussion often.

I recently found out I was diabetic and needed to improve my diet. To me, less bad stuff, more good stuff seems a logical way to do that.

My wife insists on the perfect. As an example, she buys organic rolled oats (locally produced) and boils it for a half hour each morning. They are yummy. While she is visiting her Mom, I bought some Quaker Oats and fix my breakfast in exactly 3 minutes and 50 seconds in our microwave. It makes her crazy.

I explain that eating Quaker Oats, to me, is a better breakfast than the two McDonald's Bacon, Egg, and Cheese bagels I would have eaten in the past. I see the logic in that, she sees a cop-out. Truth be told, we are probably both right.

I am on my second box of Organic Rice Krispies, and we have gone through two boxes of Kellog's Organic Raisin Bran. I can't tell the difference in them and the regular versions.

I am comfortable to organic meaning hormone and pesticide free, non-gmo products. I hope the government really CHECKS that and ensures that minimum quality.

As far as the author bemoaning the loss of the other components to his definition of "organic", I say, what difference does it make? He knows where he buys his products and who he buys them from. Saying that if they come from a local farm sold at a farmer's market they should carry one designation and if they were shipped across the country to your supermarket they should carry another designation is unnecessary in my book. You know if you bought your food at a co-op or if you bought it at Wal-Mart. That should be enough designation for you.