We Feed The World

We Feed The World

With Thanksgiving out of the way, now it's probably time that you want to stop thinking about food altogether. Especially those extra 10 pounds you picked up from Aunt Mildread's pumpkin pie... What with all that lard she used for the crust and the tons of whipped topping. Man, that must go straight to the ass.

In any event, I suppose it's a good time to talk about food.

I mean, you had a nice warm home cooked dinner just a few days ago and now you're back to eating fast food. That confuses me. I want to know what changed in the American psyche between the time when everyone accepted family-run restaurants like those along route 66 and now, where no one will eat at a chain with fewer than 100 locations.

And I'm not buying the concept that it's easy to stop at a chain restaurant that you've eaten at 100 times before because you know exactly how and what the food is going to taste like. I realize that Americans aren't exactly known for their culinary adventurism, but to just write off so many potential eating establishments, even ones that are seen on Diner's Drive-in's and Dive's, for the McDonalds assembly line taste is beyond a crime against humanity.

It makes me dread for the future when your weekly rations of Tyson Fortifeed® Chicken gloop is distributed via a system of koch industries pneumatic tubes straight to your halliburton macro-wave™ oven



What? You don't like the way that sounds? I tell you, it's going to be Bobby Flay style delicious!

Okay, it's not. But let's just roll with the assumption there that it's the future, so it has to be cool. Or we can just face reality and realize our food is becoming something of a science experiment. Jamie Oliver did a thing with both UK Students and America Students show them how companies get mechanically separated chicken.

Which got a completely different reaction in the U.S. when he tried it on school children in West Virgina..



I love it. "Because we're hungry!"

They weren't even hungry, they just saw what looked like a fucking chicken nugget and their pill-addled ADHD brains lit up like a Christmas tree set of lights. But then it hit me. I was sort of waiting for Jamie Oliver to explain why those parts of the chicken were bad. I don't think "Because it looks gross" cuts it as a proper explanation.

I mean, in a world where we love to each Veal or goose liver, why should mechanically separated chicken be anything bad? Yeah, I guess adding a ton of food "stabilizers", flavorings and possibly oil are bad, but there's really no difference in the composition of human muscle, bones and connective tissue and those of chickens.

I haven't had a chicken nugget in years, but I do remember them being fairly tasty. So I'm not sure what's all the crying about. Should we only use white breast meat for chicken nuggets? Isn't that like using Kobe Beef for a corn dog or hot dog? Or like using top shelf tequila for a margarita. Sure, it makes you look high end, but you're really not going to taste it masked under all those other flavors.

These chicken nuggets seem like perfectly edible parts of a chicken being eaten. And isn't that what we're going for? Eating as much of the animal you killed. I know if I died for someone's meal, I wouldn't want my parts tossed away. Use every last inch of me for something.



Even if it's pretty gross and you don't want to taste the icky parts of the chicken. I'm sure that if Jamie Oliver brought his show to a group of native American kids, they'll probably astound him with how much they could do with a deer carcass.

If you seriously don't eat or ever consider eating Offal, even in a show of solidarity with the third world in eating whatever you can from the animal, then you're doing it wrong. I eat offal because it's god damn delicious. You should as well. Don't think that you should leave those parts for the vagrants and the coloreds.

Here's 30 seconds of a Vegan's nighmare....




During my brief time working in a kitchen, you learn to appreciate food a bit more and become disgusted with the amount of food that you see thrown away everyday. If there's any reason why you should be upset about mechanically separated chicken it should be because that chicken can probably be more productively turned into chicken stock.

Soup made with chicken stock made from fresh chicken is so damn good. Even at home, you can just throw the carcass in a slow cooker along with the neck bone and some of the giblets and some veggies and water and wake up the next morning with a tasty stock to turn into a soup. Not to mention that in this economy, if you make stock out of the organ bones and neck, you can get at least 5 meals out of a single chicken.

But just look at the government run studies....

Mechanically separated poultry is a safe and wholesome food product with nutritional characteristics similar to ground poultry. Because of its cake-batter texture, it is ideally suited for use in hot dogs, bologna, nuggets, patties, sausages and luncheon meat-type products.

Then again, HA! The USDA.. yeah, the same people who ban Haggis and yet sell Hotdogs. It's the same USDA who says GM foods are not evil at all and.. well, here we are. But still, I'm going to trust them on this one. I don't think it's okay to say it's bad simply because it looks gross. Being grossed out by the process of food preparation is about as silver spooned as it comes.

Yes, processed food is gross looking and the fact remains that the more processed a food is, the harder it is for your body to absorb the vitamins and nutrients in it, no matter how many vitamin supplment powders and stabliizers you put in it. But should it be a reason to not be able to feed lower income people?

Then you have cone pizza..



You have to admit, that's what America is all about. Do you have an awesome idea? Do you want the freedom to make something out of it? Does it include gross fucking food? Well then, come to the U.S. and all your dreams will come true!

Though I have to admit that I find it morbidly fulfilling that someone poor soul will take a deep and hearty bite into that while it's still hot and burn his lips on molten cheese the likes of which would be 100x more powerful than a hot pocket. All having to resort to going to the emergency room.

So there you have it.. the food of the future.. or. um. yeah. We feed the world indeed.