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He averted his eyes, lifting the spoon, then forced his thoughts away from what was in the spoon and quickly put it into his mouth. He held it there for a moment, while Mel began speaking.
“It’s made here out of the best organic foods. Here, on Earth, we consider this better than food that comes in a package.” Mel smiled pleasantly.
Lexx tipped the spoon slowly, letting all the warm, and very odd tasting soup spill out into his mouth.
28 thoughts on “Day 26 Part 5 Page 03”
O.B. Juan
As run through the translator of someone growing up in a sterile ship-board environment:
What Mel said: “It’s totally organic.”
What Lexx heard: “It grew in the dirt and had bugs and worms crawling all over it before we served it to you!”
MadMann135
I agree. His organic and America’s organic is a bit different, and he is probably thinking of the ‘organic’ in the literal (old school) sense.
entity
you mean, it’s made of smelly stuff?
Joe Whitehead
More like the correct scientific meaning: Carbon-based. Implying any chemicals derived from the building blocks of life. Such as C/N/P/O/H/…
Tiff
In this case, it just means no pesticides-that-kill-bees are used. 😉
Graypatch
He finally tasted the soup. Now to wait for the drugs to take effect. Mua ha ha ha ha !
Elfguy
“Organic” food is total BS…ALL food is, by definition, “Organic” unless you’re some weird alien creature that chows down on non-carbon-based materials.
Nowadays, “Organic” is just a code word that marketers use to magically up the price of any item by a minimum of 50%, or an invitation to botulism on your strawberries.
Sabrena
I wouldn’t call TV dinners and the like ‘organic’.
nesu42
They still contain carbon-based compounds, even if some (or most) of them are synthetically made, so they are technically organic.
Joe Whitehead
It’s all marketing that became politics. Wholesome, much? FDA won’t let us call it ‘healthy’. 😉
Stuart Gathman
I find lots of “all natural” food offerings, but can never find the supernatural ones. On aisle 7¾ no doubt.
On a more serious note, “organic” on food labels has a well defined meaning, distinct from the chemical one. The precise definition has been worked out by Federal officials in a rare exercise of Federal power that is actually Constitutional (defining “weights and measures” is an enumerated power). Briefly, it refers to the agricultural methodology used to produce the food.
There are pros and cons.
Con: organic farming takes 3 times as much land for the same amount of food.
Pro: organic farming does not use petroleum products for pest control and fertilizer. Petroleum farming creates land that is dependent on petroleum for fertility – cut off the oil, and you cut off the food.
Organic farming is a necessary part of weaning ourselves from petroleum dependency. The increased land use can be offset by eating less meat (which uses 10 times as much land for the same nutrition).
nesu42
So chemical fertilizers, rather than manure (which can spread diseases), could be used as long as their composition and manufacture are not petroleum dependent?
If someone hasn’t developed a line of those yet, they ought to.
Stuart Gathman
Well, actually, any energy source can be used for “petroleum” farming. The important point is that the chemical farm is not self sufficient, but dependent on an industrial manufacturing system. If you think industrial collapse in America is imminent, this might not sit well with you.
There is a similar problem with Monsanto engineered seeds. You cannot simply save some seed to plant next year – it won’t grow. You are totally and utterly dependent on Monsanto for your life. This is why so many poor farmers wisely continue to reject overtures from Monsanto, even though the engineered crops do perform many times better. They don’t want to be a slave to Monsanto. (There is a huge scandal with Monsanto forcing their products on farmers with crooked lawyers also.)
Tiff
I did not know anything about Monsanto before two years ago when I began to seriously follow homesteading sites to learn how to make use of every inch of my future yard and get ideas for vertical gardening and such – but now that I do, I am hoping to get a few seed vaults with heirloom plants to make use of. Now… just need to find that $5,000 down payment so I can have land to play in. Really though, more people need to try gardening over trusting everything in the grocery store. We have poor soil here, but I know things that grow like crazy here. 😀 By the way, I don’t waste my money on organic labeled foods. I know it’s a scam, but in this case, they really do not want to give Lexx something that has outside chemicals on it. Where the food comes from is being discussed next week. I’m coloring the pages today or tomorrow. 😉 (I need two chickens, some chicken wire, some wood… and I’m going to make these moveable chicken runs so they can have fun running around eating the bugs and fleas… then I’m going to eat the eggs! Araucana chickens, btw, hopefully nice tufted ones that lay green eggs. 😀 I love araucana. ) Uhm.. yeah… when I get my mind set on something, I really go overboard. – Tiff
Joe Whitehead
Why not aquaculture+hydroponics? That would in theory be better than even so-called ‘Organic’ methods, enviromentally speaking.
And the government deciding to call potatoes lemons, doesn’t make French Fries taste sour, heh.
Elfguy
Your “Pro” is actually a “Con” – It means that “Organically Grown” crops are less healthy (the plants themselves) and prone to being devoured by pests and being contaminated by pathogens spread by the primitive techniques used. Very few pesticides are Petroleum based, that is a complete myth. It’s a total con job, promoted by the U.N. as part of their “Agenda 21”
Elfguy
(And yes, I did in fact intend to pun “Con” (opposite of “pro) with “Con” (a fraudulent scheme)
The Organic food craze is all Con, with no Pro. Just ask Penn and Teller.
raxondr
I would like to make two arguments. First of all, even if we did use petroleum based agriculture, we have lots domestic oil of our own. Screw the UN, they wanna take away the things I love, like my rocket launchers, my semtex easy chair, and Maude!
Second, even if we did need to go overseas and take their oil, I’m Deadpool, and I would love that. It just gives me a chance to be awesome in the desert, where you could see my rippling, glistening muscles through my suit as me and Cable- Know what? I’m just gonna repress that.
My fans would love to see me do the old ‘stuck in the desert and hallucinating’ bit.
Stuart Gathman
A “pathogen” is a bug in the wrong place at the wrong time. Your digestive system cannot operate without an ecosystem of bacteria in your intestines. If you wipe them out with antibiotics, you get very sick. Fortunately, we’ve recently learned how to replace/fortify them with “probiotics”. The same thing is true of the soil. Without the bacteria and fungi in the soil, plants die! Chemical farming kills soil bacteria, but supplies most of the plant nutrients required artificially (I say “most” because we are always learning about new nutrients for both plants and humans). The soil is now sterile, but totally dependent on supplying those artificial nutrients to support plant life. It takes many years to re-cultivate a natural ecosystem that is self supporting.
Regardless of where the energy to produce those artificial nutrients comes from, when the industrial system collapses (as current socialist government policies make inevitable if not stopped), I would much rather have access to a farm that is self sustaining, and not one that is mostly barren for 3 years or more due to lack of chemical fertilizers.
I am not against chemical farming. When space is at a premium, it makes a lot of sense. For instance, in a spaceship or moon colony, space is at a huge premium. The first agriculture under a dome on the moon will be chemical based – unless we work out a really efficient soil ecosystem with a convenient inoculation method.
William Carr
“Elfguy”, if you think the pesticides sprayed on your food are “organic” compounds, I have a Bridge to sell you.
Joe Whitehead
http://nubip.edu.ua/en/node/5175 😀
http://grist.org/article/checkout-line-organic-chemistry/ Hmm, even ‘Organic’ foods have pesticides? D’oh, better off growing it yourself! (I do grow my own pumpkins and some berries/vegetables/herbs but mainly as a hobby)
Keiya
My favorite is organic sea salt.
Sea salt is almost exclusively NaCl, which is decidedly NOT organic.
raxondr
It is agreed, then. Chel’s mom may be a xenobiological expert(inasmuch as a human can be), but she doesn’t know much about food. I refuse to eat organic foods because of the massive E Coli risk, and the fact that ‘organic’ fruits and veggies are inefficiently grown.
Also, DDT is perfectly reasonable, and fights malaria, a huge problem in Africa.
Stuart Gathman
Just like you (or more likely farm workers) can get brain damage from misuse of petroleum pesticides (which are essentially nerve agents), so misuse of organic methods can cause problems too. When using animal poop for fertilizer, it must be aged for at least a year before applying to crops. After a year, you can not tell it was ever poop, and there is no risk of E-coli (just normal soil bacteria). When using human waste, it must be heated to a temperature that kills human parasites (which kills E-coli also – and this is NOT recommended for organic farming, as the necessary disinfection kills good bugs too).
The problem comes when a farmer takes shortcuts – perhaps from financial desperation. I note the source of these incidents, and they mostly seem to happen in Mexican farms.
How do you know if your farmer (organic or petroleum based) can be trusted? The only way is to actually know your farmer! We work 1 day a week at Stony Lonesome Farm (http://slfarm.us) at what works out to minimum wage in discounts, and get to see and participate first hand in growing vegetables.
raxondr
Did I just get advertised to? This cannot be a casual post. This is an ad.
I am Deadpool, and I disapprove of this message.
Joe Whitehead
LOL, that reminds me of that episode of King of the Hill where he joins the co-op.
E. Coli are an indicator organism, actually. They grow alongside the deadlier organisms.
I found that using neem tree oil extract to kill the mold on my pumpkin plant’s leaves shows that fungi aren’t exactly 100% a plant’s friends. This is especially true of plants in the nightshade family such as tomatoes and tobacco, although personally I’m only grown tomatoes.
mjkj
Hmm, organic foods — does that mean it is made out of organs??? 😛
ayashi
technically yes.
Tomatoes, salade leafs, i nice juicy steak are all organs or various organism
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