Musings on the recent ban on transfats in New York eateries.
The following is excerpted from the short story “Goodfood”, written in 1993 by futurian W. Warren Wagar. The story is available in the anthology “Journeys to the Twilight Zone”, edited by Carol Serling. If you’re at all able, get ahold of a copy of the anthology and read the whole story.
It’s a fucked-up world we life in. I don’t guess anybody could have predicted it. My granddad never got used to it. If a cop came up to him and asked him what he thought of eating meat, he’d have rattled off all the right lines. He knew how to stay alive. But he didn’t really believe it, you know, in his gut. He was raised different. Until he was nine or ten, his folks used to take him to Wendy’s and Roy Rogers for burgers and roast beef sandwiches and that shit. The places were right out on the parkways, lit up as big as life. You’ve seen clips from the old videos. You know what everything looked like, but it’s not the same, hearing how it was from somebody who really lived it. “I used to get so damned hungry,” he told me lots of times. ““I’d be in school and I could just taste those hot greasy fries loaded with salt and those big thick piled-up sandwiches, with all those slabs of fat meat — we called ‘em ‘patties’ — and the pickles and the onions and the mustard. They put so much junk on ‘em, it’d ooze all over your face and drip down onto the table, and it was the best meal you ever had in your life. Until the next time.” And then Granddad would wink and me, and grin. “When you’re stoking in your bulgar or broiled eggplant tonight or your pita and veggies, just imagine it’s 1995 again. Have a Big Mac on me, boy. Sin a little, for the old guy.” I don’t ask my customers to eat anything bad. What they swallow is their business. I just think everybody should get their kicks any way they want. If it’s dope, or if it’s dice, or if it’s hanging out at grillers eating bacon and eggs, what’s it to me? The problem is the fucking law. You know how it goes. No fats, no flesh, no sugars. For the Sake of Your Life! Sure, people live longer since the Goodfood Laws were passed. Heart attacks and strokes are mostly stuff you get when you’re long past retirement age. I know it didn’t used to be like that. But I say, if you want to eat slow poison, it’s your privilege. Why should some bureaucrat in Washington do your thinking for you?
W. Warren Wagar, Goodfood (short story, 1993)
Wagar refers, later in this story, to Julia Child. A member of the government body that enforces the “Goodfood laws” refers to the chef as the greatest mass murderer of the later twentieth century, and to her cookbooks as “food porn”. I love this story. It’s got so many excellent projections, so many very accurate summations and observations of our culture’s relationship with food. In fact, if you get ahold of any of the Twilight Zone anthologies edited by Carol Serling, read all of the stories. They’re all excellent. I’m only sorry that it’s not easier to acquire copies of the book. And since W. Walter Wagar apparently died in 2004, I don’t know whom to contact to ask about reprint permissions for “Goodfood”.) Interestingly enough, there *is* a Goodfood Project currently in existence. I cannot tell, by the text on their site, what it is they actually do. They research something. I’m just not entirely sure what they research, or why. It’s very jargon-y, very much targeted toward a specific audience…and I’m not in it. Parts of it seem just the tiniest bit threatening, such as one of their stated objectives: to demonstrate to the agrofood sector actors (final consumers included) the advantages driven to the complete food chain control by the use of Micro and Nanotechnology inspired systems. Sorry, but any one single group having a whole lot of control over the food chain at the microbial level…is slightly unnerving.
Keywords: | laws | health | consumer rights | alternate history |
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