Today’s NYT Magazine has an absolutely delicious article about apples, or, more precisely, the way prepackaged factory-sliced fresh apples are taking over from regular whole apples. Take a couple of bites:
Industry insiders now talk about elevating a food’s “snackability,” which, in short, means engineering it with enough convenience that picking up a piece and putting it in your mouth becomes an almost perfunctory transaction . . .
[An ex-head of the Washington Apple Commission said,] “. . . you’d think the apple is convenient already. But when you finish it, you have a core to deal with. You have waste. Plus, once you’ve started an apple, you’re sort of committed to eating the whole thing.”
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at this, since Americans have long been on a determined quest to make all food as uniform, easy-to-eat, and sanitized-looking as possible. *sigh* It’s not the human interference itself that makes me sad; we’ve been messing with apples for a long, long time already. But I often look around while I’m in the supermarket and wish things hadn’t gone quite so far with all this distancing food from nature.
Now I’m going to go eat an apple… a fresh, organic apple grown by a small farmer, purchased by my parents at their local farmers’ market, and sliced by me in my own kitchen with an actual knife and cutting board.
Go here to enjoy the article.
[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 