The Bottom-Feeders
Oysters, clams, shrimp, lobsters,
mussels, squid, octopus, catfish and the like live in oceans and streams. As indiscriminate scavengers, they will eat
any kind of garbage -- toxins, fecal material, carcasses of animals that died
from disease -- which is good because they help keep the natural environment
balanced, yet, bad because they are the filters of wastes and should be left
alone to do their jobs and not made into the discount lunch menu special at
Coco's. Think of these unique creatures
as the colon part of bodies of water.
I do not eat what can not be
replaced. You can eat chicken all day
long and there's still zillions of them.
Eat a lobster and you've permanently disrupted the eco system. There are
plenty of other things to eat besides tuna or salmon and the aforementioned
species, which I think should be on an endangered species list somewhere. Still, without the "bottom-feeders"
as part of the cycle, all water dwellers, great and small, are at risk. By eating them, you are increasing risk of
several consequences to yourself, to human-beings everywhere, to the planet, directly
or indirectly. I say, think before you eat. Informed consent...
I do not drink alcohol for a
hundred reasons I won't get into presently, but, the fact is alcohol is closer
to gasoline than partakers care to admit. I associate drinking liquor with taking a
hammer and smashing it into your forehead full-force because you like the
feeling of being disoriented. I leave
drinking to others.
Yesterday, I went to lunch with
two elderly women (eighty-nine and ninety-one respectively) who drank wine/margaritas
and ordered shrimp cocktails and enthusiastically discussed how well they have
eaten their whole lives. They were quite
proud of themselves. The cocktails, with
naked shrimp offered up cold and rubbery in reddish liquid in a cute ice cream
parlor glass and accompanying long spoon, were as close to raw sewage as I can
image being served in a public restaurant with an "A" rating (which
we lovingly refer to as a "dump" -- how appropriate for offering "sewage").
One woman explained she had read
a fascinating book years prior, properly entitled, "You Are What You
Eat" (how clever!) and that changed her ways of consuming for the better
thereafter, although, if you were to bust into her kitchen this minute, you'd
find fat-filled, anti-dieters', sugar-addicts', salt connoisseur's delights in
an array of food formats brimming on every surface in the room. Looking at her pear-shaped body, you'd have strong
suspicions as to where all that junky food was headed.
The other woman responded with,
"I've always taken care of myself", as she slurped the last tiny bits
of empty calories the margarita could produce. Yet, she swears off cake 'cause,
you know, knowledge is power.
The women tried to convince me
that I should try the "heaven-on-earth" cocktails (this being the umpteenth
round-robin with no success to get me to do so but that didn't stop them from
giving it a shot one more time because they wanted to "look out" for
me in a motherly way, even though I am fifty-seven years old). I politely declined, while gritting my teeth,
saying that one spoonful of the toilet logs in diarrhea sauce being passed off
as a South-of-the-Border delicacy would produce instant involuntary projectile
vomiting, as similar experiments historically have proven, and, as fun as that
sounded, we should wait for another occasion.
It's all in my mind, they say. There
and then, I commit to my current diet of the moment of mostly rice and a
chicken taco with the chicken taken out. I look at the two of them and wonder if I am undoubtedly
diluting myself into believing my "healthy eating habits" are someday
going to come back to bite me in the ass in an unimaginable manner, say, a
spleen erupting from my backside like the grisly Chest Bursting scene in
"Alien".
Without so much as a hint of
irony during the discussion on health-related matters, a comprehensive laundry
list of ailments was tallied between the two irrepressible women, combined with
my own recollections of their on-going prognosis: poor eyesight due to macular
degeneration, hardness of hearing, various tooth decay issues, hair loss,
rashes and other skin disorders, "bad" backs, sleeplessness, urinary tract dysfunctions,
muscle stiffness, lack of energy, on-coming/on-going dementia/Alzheimer's/mental
confusion, breast and uterine cancer, stuttering, plus persistent vertigo -- to
name but a few symptoms and conditions. They're
medical marvels, really, to continue on as they have -- and driving. No thought whatsoever was thrown around the
room to possible causes-and-effects linked to the specific kinds of food (or
the medications) they have had for the entirety of their lives and the results
speaking for themselves, instead, blaming "old age" was the blanket
culprit. No, damn it. They owed the act
of living so long solely to successful dietary restraint and I should be so
lucky. I'll drink to that! Who knows
what condition they'd be in if they weren't doing so well...?
Although, they blathered, their
poor friend who sadly died not long prior to the lunch, was an unrepentant
smoker and should have known better. Staying "above the grass" was -- and continues to be on an hourly basis --
the only mission, come hell or high-jinx. Somehow these women have managed to
do just that, keeping one step ahead of the Grim Reaper while slightly pickled on
two-buck-chuck and practically taxidermy with nitrate preservatives...so far,
so good...except half-way through the course, one lady announced loudly,
"I have to go to the bathroom", never moved from her chair, and the
subject wasn't brought up again.
I am reminded of the joke:
"Did you hear Bob died?" says one guy to another. "What of?" asks the second guy.
"Nothing serious," replies the first man. Sure, you have to die from something,
eventually, and you could die getting hit by a car any time, any day. A quick, unforeseen death is entirely
different from an avoidable painfully-slow food poisoning and the indignity
associated with body functions systematically failing that follows. To my
estimation, that's worse than death itself and the fear of most of the elderly
-- the creeping awareness of loosing control over one's own being. It would be
just my luck to have the twin "Grandma Gracias" make me ingest a
cut-rate shrimp, wind-pipe bloat up from a previously-unknown allergic
reaction, linger in diaper-wearing life-support just long enough for my actual mother
to show up and whisper into my semi-conscious ear, "This is what happens
when you eat crap..."
Then I thought about the food
industry in our country, especially when so many people in the world are
starving, and how some food processing, however well-intended for our
protection, should be questioned. Cows are
fed meat by-products full of steroids in order to bulk them up. Avocados from Guatemala
are grown with untreated water and pesticides.
Chips are made from modified corn because...I don't know why they do
that... Ice is made from water with traces of strychnine to kill bacteria. How close are we to "Soylent Green?"
What is safe?
Perhaps, as the Top of the Food
Chain, we've actually become the bottom-feeders ourselves. You are what you eat, I'm told by people who
know.
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