What everyday should taste like
In plain English: Like George's farmer's market. Come on in.
I think this might also be the reason why health is so hard.
Hi, everyone-
Is it me … Or is there something off with the grocery stores these days?
The fresh stuff is always a hit or miss.
The ready-made stuff has chemicals ready to kill.
Worse, once you’re IN a section, especially the freezer section, you can’t get out. Much like an Arctic prison. Except without all the beauty and nature.
And the fluorescent light makes the whole thing feels more like a morgue, where the doctor, all bloodied from butchering, would walk out of a silver double door in “the back”—into ice chambers for the dead.
Next time you step into a major grocery store, notice how the floor plan often isn’t even predominantly about fresh food anymore. Especially if the grocery is part of a 180,000 square feet store like Walmart or Target.
Then, compare this with how we used to buy food:
The problem is that bland doesn’t sell. And that’s why when we go to the store and to a street of restaurants, it’s impossible to eat the way our bodies were programmed to eat: in varied, natural moderation. Not to mention the reality that we no longer live all that closely with our natural habitat.
But if we’re not lucky enough to live in the backcountry, then the assumption is that it’s OK to just deal with the sameness of going to Krogers, Vons, Walmart, Costco—and if you’re in the UK: Tesco and Woolworths.
So how come it doesn’t feel right?
How come, whenever I think about my 96-year old grandmother’s place in supervolcanic Sumatra, I can’t help but realize that she’s got it right? And that I’ve got it all wrong.
Maybe one day I can find a place right next to my grandmother’s, wake up to cool mountain air with her every morning, and garden and live off the land with her.
Just maybe.
For now, though, I can’t help but have this sneaky feeling that when I spend hundreds of dollars a week on food, I don’t actually quite know what I’m eating?
This lack of control over what goes into my body …
It’s like there’s a secret formal arrangement all done behind my back.
One boy in particular knew how this felt
George was born into a well-to-do family.
Everyone knows his father. And on the outside, it looks like George had a perfectly normal set of parents. But if you’ve ever got lucky enough to be invited to George’s family estate, you’ll start to see some cracks. The parents were fine alright, what with their fine jewels and even finer clothes. And it’s easy to miss what’s actually happening when you’re seated at a long wooden table. After all, the two sometimes sit on opposite ends of the table.
Meanwhile, George was always somewhere in the middle.
Both at the dinner table, and during fights.
I mean, what else are you going to do if you were born into all the civility, but none of the care?
The closest his parents ever got to touching at the dinner table, is likely when the butler took a cup the father drank from, which the butler then brought twenty feet across, and passed onto the mother. Sometimes she drank from that cup. And maybe that counts as a kiss. Maybe it doesn’t.
But get invited to enough dinners, suppers, and tea and you might just see the real reason behind the indifference:
George’s father and mother never chose each other.
Formal arrangements were made before George’s father got to meet his wife. It’s one thing to vow “To have and to hold” someone when you’ve had a chance to hold them before said vow. It’s another thing altogether when that same vow was made without choice.
At best, you’re tolerant yet resentful of the only person in the world who understood what you’re going through: the unchosen spouse.
So when it came time for George’s turn to marry, George’s father knew better.
He wanted George, literally, to have and to hold, before anything else.
Father-son relationships can be hard. It’s not always easy to say what needs to be said. So imagine not having to say anything. In the middle of all the social pressures.
From family friends who have long expected a marital match with their own kids.
From elders who just didn’t get the diversion.
From even inside the house: your helpers, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, who all have their own opinion on whom you should marry.
Imagine all that …
And yet when everyone’s gone up to bed, and there’s just the crackling of the fire, the darkness of the night, and the quiet of your thoughts … Your own father—without you having to say a single word—basically said:
I know, son.
How many times in your life do you wish that that person would just get it? And how many times do you wish to hear these three words after arguments you just can’t seem to win?
George’s father knew.
George knew, too.
He knew that his father’s support for him to do the unexpected, to not marry without choice … meant everything.
A look.
A nod.
—was probably enough to say:
Thank you, father.
So he and his father thoughtfully worked out a reasonable plan without anyone’s knowledge.
So that one fine day, George gets to choose.
And one fine day in June, indeed, George chose … to visit a young girl named Caroline.
He’s heard a lot about her. His aunt talked about her all the time. Caroline, after all, was his aunt’s ward. So word of her as a person had reached George’s ear more than once. But sometimes a good word is colored with a hint of biased embellishment. So George wanted to find out more. He doesn’t want his aunt, butler, or a twenty foot dinner table to stand in between.
George’s family being well-known made it hard.
So he came up with an alias. And went to Caroline’s summer house.
Oh, the joys of summer love.
So many things could go wrong.
Sweat can seep through layers of pretentious clothing. Preventing anyone from both pretending or talk-layering themselves up.
Nature can dampen any testosteroned “Hey” with hay-fever that makes anyone immediately uncool. And if that’s not enough:
The warm weather makes you feel like everything will last forever. Lulling the wooed into a false sense of needlessness. Prompting them to boo any efforts towards forever togetherness.
But many things could go right, too.
As they did for George.
He saw Caroline’s good character. That’s the thing about good character. In the deep summer heat, everything good tends to swell. Making it all the rosier. And after these visits to her summer home, he wouldn’t have anyone else.
It’s all:
Sweet Caroline is whom I will have and I will hold.
Caroline and George did marry.
And maybe that’s why, when George had taken over his father’s role in the public eye, he knew the importance of having ownership over what you get to have by way of holding.
George, in the history books, is known as King George the II.
This same King, after all that he’s seen in Caroline and his father, knew what the people need:
A place where anyone gets to hold before having:
A farmer’s market by any other name.
Centuries before our clinical fate of not knowing whether those silver-double doors in our grocery stores go to a morgue or a truck, George created the Lancaster Central Market in Pennsylvania.
We know the character of farmer’s markets:
No one needs to use an alias to hold what they’re about to put in their mouths.
No one has to demote to ‘second-hand’ choices (which, in some cases, is the same as ‘no-choice’) from revenue-driven products. Better yet,
No one needs a pre-made formal arrangement made by faceless executives—to choose how to live and to health. And more importantly: how to have and to hold.
It’s no wonder that this market has survived for nearly 300 years now.
Because what George did then for her Caroline, is exactly what I want:
I want to break any long tables that stand in between. I want to shred the pieces of wood into thin air. Then, I want to break the glass in the white-gloved butler hand. And join hands … To Have and To Hold … the one thing no one should ever—and I mean, ever—take away:
The choice to taste choices every day.
-Thalia
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-Thalia
Your piece reminded me of programmes I have seen about the whole evolving science of designing and re-arranging the layouts of supermarket aisles in order to capitalise on food fads, or up-sell certain types of novel offerings maybe on the back of some revenue from the makers and so on. The applied behavioural psychology at work was a revelation to me. But now I can see it every time I am in one of the big supermarkets. In contrast, there is a tiny independent shop in my local small town, which just puts the cases and sacks of local and regional fruit and veg outside on display. They serve you from what was the doorway but is now in effect a serving hatch with more fresh food stacked up in front. It's a delightful and idiosyncratic setup, especially as it's in a street which is mostly residential and bars with the perennial fast-food outlets. I bought some new season red-skinned Cyprus potatoes there today as it happens! I think the tinge comes from the soil make-up there, which makes them unique. Expensive but worth it. A lovely piece, thank you.
Regarding US grocery stores, I read somewhere when people shop in them they should stick 'to the fringes.' The fringes are where the produce is and often the bakery, but as you go inward, it becomes the frozen food section, nothing fresh. That's a touching story about George II. Neat.