The following is an excerpt from an article at the Genetic Literacy Project by Rachel Laudan on the ability to choose which kinds of foods people buy and consume.
At a party around 2000, my mother, then in her late 80s, tasted a cheese she loved. The host told her it was made in a remote English downland village just ten miles away. My mother really wanted that cheese. Since she found walking difficult, I was dispatched to seek it out in the market and all the local gourmet stores. Total failure.
Then my mother heard that the giant British supermarket chain Tesco was selling it as part of their “local” campaign. She thought she could manage Tesco, with its handicapped parking and carts to hang on to.
I was terrified someone would knock my mother over, so frail had she become. But we made it to the cheese counter. Sure enough the cheese was there. The girl started cutting a wedge, helpfully commenting: “It’s organic.”
My mother was a farmer’s wife and very picky about her food. She never ate an egg of unknown parentage, never ate broiler chicken because she disliked the smell of broiler houses, never ate bread that did not come from a baker she trusted.
Even so, she was not about to buy organic cheese. Drawing herself up to her full but much shrunken height, my mother let fly in her still vibrant voice:
“I DON’T EAT ORGANIC FOOD.”
Read the rest of the article at the Genetic Literacy Project.