One story. Two treatments.<\/p>\n
The topic is a news report that a UK supermarket is selling meat in touch-free packaging for squeamish people.<\/p>\n
One<\/a> article is a rant. The humour is sarcastic, some might say sardonic.<\/p>\n The alternative treatment below is much sillier, and is based on a mishearing of the headline.<\/p>\n Headline<\/a>: Supermarket to sell \u2018touch-free\u2019 raw meat to cater for squeamish Millennials<\/p>\n A friend of mine recently told me about a grocery store\u2019s initiative to protect us sensitive types from the horrors associated with food production. She was nursing a cold at the time (no doubt contracted from an infected surface, but you can\u2019t avoid touching everything<\/em>), and she told me that Sainsbury\u2019s in the UK is to start selling touch-free beet to cater to squeamish billennials.<\/p>\n Uncooked food has always creeped me out. It doesn\u2019t matter what it is\u2014vegetable, fruit, or even grains\u2014it\u2019s obvious that violence has taken place to get it to the grocery stores.<\/p>\n Brussels sprouts have been hacked off their stems; potatoes have been ripped from the warm moist soil and their parent plants; bananas have been chopped off their trees\u2014the very trees that gave life to them and nourished and protected them as little fingerlings, and those same bananas suffer a second trauma when they\u2019re separated from their siblings to be sold individually or in small bunches.<\/p>\n And as for grains\u2014they\u2019ve had to endure the rigours of being processed in a combine harvester, the predecessor of which was called a \u201cthresher\u201d or \u201cthrasher\u201d. Horrific!<\/p>\n Cheese and milk are fine. There\u2019s no obvious link to anything living (other than the bacteria and stuff in them \u2013 yeeuchh!!). And beef and pork don\u2019t freak me out either\u2014I mean, it doesn\u2019t look like anything that lived or grew or whatever; it\u2019s just\u2026 well, meat.<\/p>\n But everything else \u2013 eeughh! Fish; green onions; rabbit; turnips; chicken; green beans; duck; shrimp; raspberries\u2026 They\u2019re all very recognizable, and as soon as I recognize them for what they are (or were), I get this overwhelming attack of the heebie jeebies.<\/p>\n I have to admit to being kind of on the fence with offal\u2014liver, kidney, heart, lungs\u2026 To be honest, even though they\u2019re reputedly from the insides of animals, they don\u2019t look like much at all, but mmmmmmm they\u2019re delicious!<\/p>\n Now, canned food and TV dinners\u2014no problem\u2014everything\u2019s cooked and looks, smells, tastes and feels yummy. Ditto burgers and weiners.<\/p>\n Chicken fingers worry me bigly, although it\u2019s mostly the name\u2014\u201cchicken\u201d and \u201cfingers\u201d. I don\u2019t need to be reminded what I\u2019m eating. And it\u2019s little wonder we never see live chickens with fingers; they\u2019ve all had them cut off so we can eat them.<\/p>\n I wonder\u2014do chicken fingers grow back again?<\/p>\n But do you know the thing that freaks me out the most?<\/p>\n Beet.<\/p>\n Their skins feel so\u2026 skin-like. And when you cut them, they bleed!<\/p>\n I love the taste of beets, but show me a whole beet and all I see and feel is the misery and cruelty that the beet must\u2019ve suffered. The poor things have been allowed to grow almost to full maturity and then\u2026 Bam! In the prime of their lives, they\u2019re ripped away from everything they\u2019ve ever known and decapitated, like young teens being sacrificed on the altar of some barbarian god.<\/p>\n No; I\u2019m glad that Sainsbury\u2019s now offers touch-free beet for sale. Apparently, you just cut the wrapping and slide the beet into the pan or pot. I know deep inside of me that they\u2019ve been treated as badly as beets ever have\u2014probably worse, since they\u2019ve had to be flayed before being wrapped in their touch-free coats, but at least I don\u2019t have to touch them and feel their pain.<\/p>\n Thanks marketing people\u2014I love you all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One story. Two treatments. The topic is a news report that a UK supermarket is selling meat in touch-free packaging for squeamish people. One article is a rant. The humour is sarcastic, some might say sardonic. The alternative treatment below is much sillier, and is based on a mishearing of the headline. Headline: Supermarket to sell \u2018touch-free\u2019 raw meat to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,490],"tags":[664,561,562,558],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fake","category-the-commentaries","tag-500words","tag-beet","tag-misheard","tag-touch-free-meat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1530,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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