by RAF KATIGBAK

There’s an awkward feeling when your childhood myths are debunked. When I was a kid, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were just as real as Mom and Dad. When I first found out that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were my mom and dad, and that the Tooth Fairy was actually a rancorous spirit that had taken the form of the Tooth Fairy to exact vengeance on the town that lynched her 150 years earlier, the effect was absolute devastation. For adults, it’s easy to dismiss this mental anguish as just another part of growing up; for kids, the effect is basically like getting the very foundations of reality shaken up like a jar full of Sea Monkeys.

In retrospect, finding out that what most of your parents told you is complete and utter bullshit is a necessary part of becoming an adult. In many ways, it’s a relief to discover that you can totally pig out at the buffet table and then jump right into the pool and pee without fear of your stomach/heart/head exploding and the water turning blue, or even that you can have an entire six week masturbation marathon without fear of losing your vision (although the BBC reported last year that, in some cases, use of Viagra could lead to blindness).

But other myths aren’t so fun to debunk. Take spinach for example, that leafy green that your parents always told you was full of iron-y goodness. Spinach has since not only proven to not have as much iron as supposed, but what fraction of remaining nutrients it did have has an absorption rate of almost zero. Now, with recent health warnings against certain American brands of the stuff, poor old spinach has gone from a superhuman source of vitamins to something that could give you abdominal cramping and bloody diarrhea—stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Popeye!

Now, of course, the latest food warning comes from certain organic carrot juice that health officials say might give you botulism. That’s right: organic carrot juice has now become a deadly nerve toxin that could kill you. I remember when the biggest worry about buying organic was that you might start overspending on Lululemon active wear. Can somebody tell me exactly when shopping for groceries morphed into walking through an Afghani minefield? Pretty soon, the Canadian Food Agency will announce that taking a bite of brussel sprout will make your face explode and that tomatoes give you AIDS.

Why is it so hard to eat right these days? For a while, organic food seemed to be the perfect solution: fresh, locally grown, pesticide- and hormone-free food that supported the local economy and was better for the environment. Of course, what most people don’t realise is that things labelled as organic may not be so environmentally friendly.

While we have yet to witness the Whole Foods chain takeover here in Quebec, the American organic supermarket has definitely made its mark in the States and part of Canada. With Wal-Mart and Kraft getting into the game, organic is now big business, and normally with big business comes big compromise. The organic yogurt you love—the one with a quaint label like Babbling Brook Farms depicting a bucolic scene of happy cows grazing in a golden meadow—was probably squirted out at some airport-side plant using organic powdered milk shipped from 1,500 kilometres away and coming from organic cows neatly filed into a giant organic industrial feedlot.

Right now, the organic food market has hit a paradox. The movement has caught on and is growing and expanding beyond its wildest dreams, but as it does, it’s forced to shed its idyllic philosophy and often times must outsource the scarce organic ingredients from countries like China and Brazil, where standards are not as easy to enforce and the ethical treatment of workers (at one time a pillar of the organic food movement) less easy to monitor.

The other end of it is that organic food doesn’t necessarily taste better. I once bit into a 100 per cent organic, locally grown apple that tasted like 100 per cent ass. So what to do when eating spinach will give you red-runs, drinking organic carrot juice is like having a glass of VX gas and organic fruit tastes like poop? I say it’s time to take it back to the old school: it’s time for a processed foods renaissance! Right now, I’m loaded up on Cheez Whiz, Fluff and as much trans-fatty, partially hydrogenated, Olestra-filled goodness I can find. After all, when the North Koreans nuke me, you and the Tooth Fairy till we glow in the dark, I know the only things left standing will be the roaches, Dick Clark and a stack of Kraft singles.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca

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