What The hell Has Happened To Food!?

Nation of Pica. If I were to write a book on the state of food that would be the title – Nation of Pica. The number of people consuming non food items is overwhelming and the dumbing down of food sophistication grows by leaps and bounds.

I can’t imagine paying hard-earned money again for what passes as good food. My example today was a meal at Ruby Tuesday’s.

When Ruby Tuesday came to town there was a lot of excited people. A nice chain where one could get nutritious home cooked down home food. I think it may have actually met that criteria at one time, but todays meal was fraught with chemically treated wilting “fresh” vegetables, prefab fish patties, high fructose corn syrup and saccharine sweet scripting designed to allow the customer only one civil response – a positive one, when in fact a strong negative was really in order.

The shrinking salad bar contained wilting and brown lettuce. The mixed greens contained decomposing slim ready for the compost pile. I picked through and found enough to make a salad. About a year ago I made my last complaint about the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday after they refused to throw away the totally rotten lettuce on the salad bar and I boycotted them for a while.

The cut ends of the broccoli was brown and the head was wilted. I picked out a few passable pieces. My dining companion bravely ordered the salmon with steamed broccoli. It was obviously a prefab frozen patty before being what looked to be deep-fried.

I don’t have to have a stellar meal every time I eat out. Please don’t charge me for a stellar meal.

I understand scripting, every industry uses it now. Scripting has its’ place but is easily overused. Over burdening the wait staff with paragraphs of verbiage does little to make up for the less than stellar food. When the statement arrived, “Isn’t everything delicious!”, one is left with two options, buy in to it and agree or tell the truth. The truth was, it was not delicious, it was passable but just barely. Hence the dumbing down. How many times does it take before it is believed? Can anyone say 1984?

High fructose corn syrup, flavor enhancers, emulsifiers, preservatives, unpronounceable chemicals whipped into a mass hysteria of pica. And scripting. Brain washed into deliciousity of non food. We live in a world where soda pop and corn chips constitute the breakfast of champions; or if one moves up the scale toward a nutritious meal, instant oatmeal (stripped of all nutrition), laced with mock apple bits and cinnamon flavor.

I don’t rant very often, but rant is where you find me tonight. And you find me eating real food. Vegetable wraps made with freshly grated cabbage, carrots and radish, seasoned with home made pepper jam and real cream cheese.

Skip the margarine, the fake cheese, the milk substitute, and artificial sweeteners. Skip the meat patty containing 100% real beef (along with 100% fillers). Skip the fruit juice drinks, the scramblers and the extruded patties.

Have a real meal, made at home (how novel!) and have it be real food. Whatever is in season will be fresh. Whatever is grown locally will be fresh. There really is no reason to eat something that has been disassembled, recombined, flash steamed, flash frozen, packaged in plastic and shipped back and forth across the country a couple times then heated in a microwave or deep fried.

S.