food
28 Feb 2008
The Story Begins in a Supermarket
If you've never seen an infant suck down a Coke as though it were mother's milk, I highly recommend the vision, writes Helen Razer
The story, damn it, must begin in a supermarket. I wish this were not the case. If I were a more ethical consumer, I’d be able to begin the tale in a farmer’s market bordered by biodynamic meats, wholesome pulses and the corpse of global capitalism.
But as much as I’d like to circulate the fiction of my leftish and fresh-faced mien, the story wouldn’t have much of a point if it began amid the Hessian and good-will of rustic produce. We must begin in a supermarket.
So. I was shopping in a supermarket. When I shop, generally with my partner in consumption and in life, I do not use one of those little books that decode ingredients described in letters and numbers rather than words. Instead, we normally surpass packet items altogether. We choose to poison ourselves with the more steadfast pesticides of supermarket greens and the hormones and antibiotics of supermarket meat.
So there we were, eschewing frozen goods in favour of "fresh" items grown, in all likelihood, on diminished land by unsustainable means, myopically minding our own business.
And, then. Our trolley overflowing with everyday toxins. We saw it.
There’s a certain childless sort inured to the charms of infants. Years of questions about our fertility and decades of scrutiny by smug parents who implore you to agree, "isn’t he darling" have hardened us. It’s an unfortunate candour that leads me to inform hitherto proud breeders: no, actually, he’s not darling. In fact, he’s the sort who looks as though he might be armed with a copy of Catcher in the Rye and an AK-47 atop a water tower of the not-terribly-distant dystopic future.
Such a child, of circa 12 months, was before us in the supermarket, riding atop a Bugaboo.
Perhaps you have seen a Bugaboo. This engineered European obscenity is to supermarket aisle as a 4WD is to parking lot. More than a mere pram, it’s an oversized, overpriced vulgarism that appeals to the shallowest part of a proud new parent. And, darling, if you do not have one, you’re clearly sans high-end taste, children and/or a robust line of credit.
Satan’s spawn was squawking from his prestige rickshaw. And, even though his primary carer had hung the expense where his comfort was concerned, he continued to squawk past tinned soups, dry goods and well into the confectionery aisle.
An inscrutable mother, dazzling in the roomiest Armani Exchange marquee money could buy, sustained a grin. That grin grown in permafrost that says, "isn’t he darling".
No. Actually. He’s not.
The sovereign devil squawked and his squawks turned to shrieks and still the mother grinned like an acolyte soon to drink deadly Kool Aid. And she grinned as her issue’s diabolic mitts grabbed at sugary waste. And still she grinned as he emptied the litter of food manufacturers into his Bugaboo, on to his person and on to the floor.
We watched with some fixity and waited for the gelid grin to crack. And, just for a minute, at about the time the child hit a note that made Celine Dion sound tolerable by contrast; we saw the grin split for an instant.
In the time it takes to squeeze the trigger of an AK-47, the grin split, bonded and restored itself. All thanks to a carbonated utility. The mother of Lucifer (let’s call her Rosemary) reached for a bottle of Coca Cola.
And SHE FED COCA COLA TO HER BABY. She did it so deftly and with such maternal poise, we could tell that this was not the first time she’d mollified her vile child by such deadly means.
My companion in consumption and life stared at me. And I stared back. And each of us thought, as we later confirmed, "Should I take a picture with my mobile phone for future laughs, or should I just call welfare?"
This baby blotting paper took the waste of a weird world up in no time flat. And the squawking stopped and his grin, a mirror of his malevolent Rosemary’s, returned.
If you’ve never seen an infant suck down a Coke as though it were mother’s milk, I cannot recommend the vision highly enough. If you’re looking for a single act to typify a broad and burgeoning attitude to food, this one really takes the sugar-encrusted biscuit.
In fact, the chic activists of Slow Food might consider employing this tableau as a nice bit of agitprop. It’d work, too. Corpulent citizens of the world might just consider the consequences of a life and a gastrointestinal tract steeped in poison should they spot a monster in a Bugaboo sponging up the by-product of an ultra-liberalised mill.
The image certainly burnt itself into the retina of my own shaky morality. I changed my shopping habits at once. Or, to be more forthright, I changed my level of guilt about shopping and began renewed interest in the everyday mechanics of food. On the advice of Slow Food comrades, I began to endure Michael Pollan’s degustation of dissent.
One of the more literate and charismatic agitators combating crap food, Pollan is one of a new breed. Famous filmmaker Morgan Spurlock joins the pissed-off chorale that is rapidly finding a new harmony between food and politics.
In recent years, Barbra Kingsolver, Eric Schlosser and Kenneth F Kiple have added to this literature. From scholarly passion to cheesed-off polemic, gastronomes offer us a range of reasons to change the terms of our consumption. Raj Patel’s recent work, Stuffed and Starved, emerged as an especially brutal critique. Starting, as it did, with the revelation that the planet’s one billion obese citizens now outnumber the starving.
Naturally, you can choose to read all of this as more painful evidence that the world is headed for hell in a hand-cart. Or, you can choose to view movements like Slow Food or food patriotism (wherein the "locavore" chooses only to consume foods produced within a 200 kilometre radius of their residence) as a pointless and reflexive response to unstoppable macro-economic might. How, after all, will I disrupt the malevolent marriage of agribusiness with petrochemical companies in my decision to buy local and biodynamic cheese?
Well. I reckon you can.
Excuse my hackneyed candour. And, please excuse the detail that I spent my past weekend at the largest Slow event outside Italy. By next week, I could easily morph back into cynicism of the everyday.
For now, however, I see food as a fulcrum for great change.
There is no form of consumerism that confers such immense pleasure to the activist. As I’m fairly ancient, I recall Not Buying South African, Not Buying Israeli and Not Buying French. These snubs, as symbolically gratifying as they might have been, awarded no immediate benefit to my every day. (Actually, Not Buying French really pissed me off. Back in those days, there were no local goat’s cheese producers.) By contrast, the refusal to consume hydrogenated oils or refined sugars makes my skin clearer, my waist smaller and my stools more buoyant. We should underestimate neither vanity nor regular bowel motions as a motivation for change.
Forlornly, I still shop at supermarkets. Every so often I shift my battered battery-hen heft through the turnstile and poison myself with the mantra "I Don’t Have Time For Anything Else". Which, really, is a colossal fiction. If I don’t eat well and if I don’t uphold a robust curiosity for the things I put in my pie-hole, I’ll have time for nothing.
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Wow…I wouldn’t do that, and I’m, like, an awful parent.
Yes, on the subject of fast foods and Coke taking our next generation (and much of this one) to hell on a hospital trolley, I work Sunday mornings at a local market, so I see a lot of people literally coming and going. It has to be said that many of the Anglo-Australians going past, so slowly and sedately as if to conserve all the energy and sugar and fat derivatives they can, are so huge that my partner and I tend to mentally divide them into two-person, three-person and occasionally four-person arses. On one stretch of about twenty passers-by, it seemed that every Anglo-Australian was obese, some grossly so, and diabetic as well.
Everyone in Australia, male and female, Black and White, has enough income to make healthy choices: to buy crap or not to buy crap ? Junk food or healthy food ? Grow your own or buy it ? So the welfare population, Black and White, buy crap, not healthy food, and do not grow their own, and suffer the consequences. In the Third World, they would not have the wherewithall to buy much crap, or healthy food either, so they would grow their own if they could, or be forced to buy limited amounts of the most sustaining food, for themselves and their children.
Obesity is a major health concern of the underclass in Australia, Black and White, but not of the Third world. To an extent, it appears to be a function of easy food full of fat and sugar and salt, and poor exercise, among other things. So sing out when you see a fat person in the Third World on TV. And can we please stop referring to the health problems of Indigenous people as Third World problems ? They are nothing of the sort. They are a function of lifestyle, health choices: junk food, lack of exercise and addictions, mostly booze, marijuana and tobacco. Third World ? I don’t think so. Joe
There are a few other issues at stake in Aboriginal communities that contribute to their problems, as their are for all of us for that matter. The individual is responsible for everything is as simplistic as the individual is responsible for nothing. Is the 12 month old child responsible for the coke its mother fed it?
Ultimately, parents are responsible for raising their children. Children are not responsible for anything which happens to them, depending of course on their age and maturity, until they are no longer children: this is thedefinition of ‘child’, after all. Which is why the responsibilities of parents - and governments in the final instance, as fiduciary and ‘guardian of last resort’ of all children - are so important, especially these days in a far more complex world than even fifty years ago.
Yes, there are other issues in Aboriginal settlements, but this effective child-rearing is one of the most crucial. The tragedy of the northern settlements is that nothing like that is occurring. Households will have a plasma TV before a decent fridge, and a stack of DVDs before a cupboard-full of decent food. If food is cooked, it will be fried, not broiled, simmered, boiled, steamed, roasted, or even grilled. Adults will be fed before children, since the yare, after all, bigger. Children will be fussed over until the next one comes along, at two or three, then that kid can search of food in the bins - it’s called raising the child to be independent, to be able to face exciting challenges, to be self-reliant, strong, able to make choices at an early age. It’s also called neglect.
Aboriginal people are dying very young from completely avoidable ailments: diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, infections, etc. Not really a Third World pattern. And very much a function of lifestyle choices.
Yes, it is so hard to get fresh food out in the remote settlements. But some have a fair asupply of water, and most (if the ywere missions at one time) have had vegetable gardens, orchards, chooks. perhaps a few milking cows and a flock of sheep. But easy is better than hard: once welfare came in (as people were entitled to), then such projects were abandoned. So the choice was made: buy it rather than grow it. It’s still very much a choice. To drink or not to drink ? That’s a choice. To smoke or not to smoke ? That’s a choice. To buy vast quantities of Coke ? That’s a choice. To blow a packet of money on yarndi/ganja ? That’s a choice. To put locks on the fridge doors so that kids can’t feed themselves ? That’s a choice. Nobody forced any of these choices on people: they made those choices themselves. Where were the dieticians, the health educators ? I don’t know: are there any in the northern settlements ? I don’t know.
Dear Helen,
now that you’ve witnessed the lengths parents will go to to shut our kids up so as not to interfere with your consumption, perhaps you could have a bash as acknowledging that the little buggers are actually human, and have the right to exist and go to the supermarket.
Driveby judgement is rather unattractive. Promote the fabulousness of slow food and organic markets to your hearts content, but lay off the woman who’d already spent ALL DAY with that kid making the noise that broke you after a few minutes.
Cheers, Kate
Yes, Kate they are human, and have a right to exist - but other patrons of the supermarket have a right to enjoy shopping without benefit of child tantrums. Deal with it. Ok, the parent might have had this all day, but that was the parent’s choice. Restaurants are a similar case, by the way.
Throughout history, there have been parents. This is not the first time, Kate ! And those parents have always had a multitude of options, for coping with stress, for dealing with obnoxious children and for guiding their children’s eating behaviour. one of those options is to think about decent food and try to steer children towards it: for example, to have a spare bottle of nourishing MILK in the pram’s storage compartment and to administer it as required.
Of course, for every sensible option, there are a range of easy options, dumb-arse options, plain lazy options. Children will live with the consequences of those lazy choices. Joe
I loathe children: usually they are loathsome because they’re spoiled rotten by dim-witted mother whose vocabulary can barely stretch to read the nearest fashion mag. Most especially do I loathe those giant ‘thingos’ mentioned in the article. The story is one of Gothic horror, but, as I said, the average woman is so effing stupid she doesn’t deserve to have kids.
Feeding a baby on Coca-Cola? Are you sure it wasn’t just a bottle that looked like Coke? A bottle that contained something positive like nitroglycerine? Nitroxide, cyanide?
I hope the husband of this stupid woman has the guts to make her pay the fortune to have the kid’s teeth fixed.
This sort of woman, and the, did you say Bugaboo?, who strides down narrow pavements convinced she has right of way, and ploughs through elderly ladies, other mothers, teen -agers and little old men. They seem to think (as if!) they have some god given right to act like a tank. And we wonder why children are so loathsome. And I’ve got two of them.
PS: You can sandbag these ladies by waiting for them at the checkout counter. Try leaning over to admire the baby. It doesn’t take too much practice to work out how you can accidentally tip all of her shopping into the ‘Bugaboo?’ I don’t know what is the more satisfying; the prim, grim smile of tolerance she gives you; or the scream of fury given out by the progeny.
I loathe children: usually because they’re spoiled rotten by dim-witted mothers whose vocabularies can barely stretch as far as the nearest fashion mag. Most especially do I loathe those giant thingos mentioned in the article. The story is one of Gothic horror, but, as I said, the average woman is so effing stupid she doesn’t deserve to have kids.
Feeding a baby on Coca-Cola? Are you sure it wasn’t just a bottle that looked like Coke? And contained something positive like nitroglycerine? Nitroxide, cyanide?
I hope the stupid woman has to pay a fortune to have the kid’s teeth fixed.
The sort of woman, and the, did you say Bugaboo?, who strides down narrow pavements convinced she has right of way, and ploughs through elderly ladies, other mothers, teen -agers and little old men. They seem to think (as if!) they have the god given right to act like a tank. And we wonder why children are so loathsome. And I’ve got two of them.
PS: You can sandbag these ladies by waiting for them at the checkout. By leaning over to admire the baby you can accidentally fall over her shopping, causing most of it to fall into the thingo.
rmg1859: JOE? I thought you were a Marxist Revoluntionary and a radical thinker; not a superior arse-hole who condemns ‘the underclass’ (your words!) for having bad eating habits! It’s been my experience that many, many of your so called ‘under classes’ grow their own vegies and eat far better than the population as a whole. A very dear friend, deceased, fed himself, his wife, three children and subsequently their husbands, largely out of his vegie garden. He lived in the country, even so he and his family ate really good meals. I’ve lived, or had lengthy stays in countries as diverse as Iran and Argentina and found many people who delight in producing good, although not extravagant meals. The thing that signals the end of healthy food, is the Supermarket and the fast food outlets. A few years ago I was in Ecuador, Quito-to be precise-when the first Maldonaldos (MacDonalds) opened. A year later supermarkets were well entrenched. Two years ago it was quite clear where all the fatties came from.
Hi Venise,
As a superior arse-hole who does condemn any lazy parent who can’t turn his or her brain on long enough to care about their childrem, yes, I saying that people on permanent welfare do tend to at least appear to have somewhat lax food habits: I work on Sundays at a local market, a fantastically valuable experience in terms of working with real Australians, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Afghans and Poles, Spanish and Lebanese, Argentinians and Greeks. And it is difficult not to conclude that many Anglo-Australians are extremely careful in conserving their energy: they drag their incredibly huge arses slowly from stall to stall looking for fatty and sugary foods, while their fat kids trail behind with their buckets of chips and smoothies.
Vegetable gardens ? Well, it should be a simple test to peer over the back fence of a few welfare-cases and see what fantastic gardens they have. But not in my experience. Would that it was the case, but not while some people think that the world owes them a living and that effort of any sort is for mugs.
The so-called poor in Australia are not anything like the genuine poor in Ecuador, I suggest, Venise. What are the welfare payments like in Quito ? What do single mothers get a fortnight in Quito ? What do age pensioners get, or disability pensioners, or unemployed ? Let me guess. Nada.
Cheers Joe