“If gramma don’t recognize what’s in it — it ain’t food.” ~ the WiseFool

Koo-ta-ching. Koo-ching. Koo-ta-ching. That’s the sound of coins right outside my front door. What might it be? If you were a mouse, you might think you were roosting beneath the cash register of a high-traffic retail joint.

Ha! There is a vending machine right outside my downtown apartment in Portland, Oregon. It stocks everything from Pop Tarts to Starburst candy to Cheetos chips. Needless to say, my front door is the most popular spot in the entire building. It’s a happening place, 24/7. I should be flattered, but I know better.

I could host a BYOC (bring your own coins) Superbowl Sunday party every week of the year.

For many of my good neighbors, this is food. Perfectly intelligent people, young and old alike, live on this stuff; some raid the machine at odd hours of the night. Hey, the rest of your day may be iffy, but my front door will always leave you feeling like a winner: You get to bag it every time. Well, almost. Sometimes you have to punch, kick and rock the machine and yell unprintables. Busiest time? Evening.

When I was fresh out of school and green behind the ears, I too lived on this stuff. Now this machine and its contents are so alien to me, I feel like the tribal in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy” as he reacts to a coke bottle falling out of the sky.

Right around the corner are two more soda machines. They stock, what else, colored sugar water that passes for “beverage” and slickly branded bottled water that’s proven to be worse than unfiltered municipal tap water in your kitchen sink.

If I were a puritan, I’d call all this stuff — “garbage.” Except that I don’t know whom I’d insult more. Besides, it would be a grotesque lie. You see, even garbage decomposes. This crap does not decompose. This junk will never die. This stuff has an infinite shelf life.

All food is perishable: It is programmed to die by nature. Unless, of course, it’s highly processed corporate-food, which no loving mother would ever feed her child. Then why do perfectly smart people eat this junk? Beats me! But it goes to show that “smart” don’t make you wise.

Actually, I do know why. Two words: Cheap and convenient. At least for now. Real expenses and inconvenience come later.

So what is it that makes this stuff non-food? Well, let us count the ways:
If bugs won’t touch it, it ain’t food.
If bacteria won’t touch it, it ain’t food.
If it won’t breakdown and decompose, it ain’t food.
If it has an infinite shelf life, it ain’t food.
If it has more than five ingredients, it ain’t food.
If your gramma don’t recognize it, it ain’t food.

Gramma: Food or love, it must pass muster with gramma. If it makes it past grammy’s nose, you’re kosher; otherwise, you’re toast. There is not a single snack in this vending machine where the list of ingredients is less than five. Worse, grammy recognizes almost none of the ingredients. And that, my friend, is what makes this stuff non-food.

And speaking of gramma, wouldn’t you know it, the vending machine stocks “Grandma’s HomeStyle” cookies from Frito-Lay. I counted at least 15 ingredients on the packet. Poor grammy got a bellyache and turned over in her grave when you showed her the bag of goodies with her name and picture on it — and the long list of ingredients she can’t spell.

“But, but, this is not what I really eat. This is what I snack on in between meals,” you protest. Touché. But hey, who’s picking on you? First, I’m not the food police (that would be way too much responsibility, and I’m too lazy for that.) Second, no one is judging you; I’m just making observations. Third, what you put in your body is entirely your business, not mine.

But the fact that you’re still reading this is proof enough that you do care about what you put in your body. You may not care enough to make changes just yet, but at some level inside you — you do care.

That’s because food is life; junk that pretends to be food is death. Not the instant kind (which would be merciful); rather, it’s the slow and painful kind of decline. And we wonder why America spends more money on health care than any other nation on the planet and has little to show for it in return.

Now answer me this: If you don’t know what’s inside these snacks, do you think you really care about what’s in the rest of your food? Not a chance!

If I’m a carnivore snacking out of vending machines, do you think I care about where tonight’s chicken dinner came from? How did the chicken live? What did it eat? How was it treated? Did it ever see the sun? How large was the flock it was a part of? How was it killed? If my answer is a “no” to any of these questions then I don’t know jack about my food.

To not know how something gave up its life so you can live is not just sad, this attitude (or lack of it) is precisely what powers consumerism. But then, that is precisely where giant food processors (ADM, Kraft Foods, Cargill, Tyson Foods, et al) want you to be. What you don’t know about your food is good for food business.

It’s an open secret that vending machine stuff is pure junk, which may be part of its attraction. But do you think that the rest of our industrial food fares any better? With the exception of the outside aisles, almost the entire middle of a typical supermarket is packed to the hilt with junk.

When it comes to food, science has failed us, food-corporations have failed us, media has failed us, our government has failed us. Worse, our own good sense has failed us. Where’s grammy when you need her?

Grammy isn’t hip with the times, but she has more common sense than all the “experts” combined. Time to resurrect gramma, wouldn’t you say?

Namaste, Shri

© Shri Yannam