EAT YOUR GREENS!!! WILL A SALAD OF THE FUTURE STILL BE GOOD FOR ME?

My ancestors must have sat and dreamt of the future. They must have dreamt of metal horses and soaring men. They must have dreamt of a sunlit night, or maybe even flying to the moon Well, in my world, the future just happened and it sometimes feels like there is nothing more to it. Once upon a time, men wandered through towering trees and tall grass leaves, seeking nourishment from the breast of the wild. They spent quiet nights in the glow of crackling bonfires, feasting on fresh carcasses I live in a world of variety. A world that can hardly keep up with its own pace. I live in a world where men have wings, and the will of the tongue dictates to Nature. How will those who are long dead and gone react, it they could see some of the things that crouch on my plate at mealtimes? Maybe they might relish the cooling, sweet taste of table sugar or the scent of freshly baked biscuits gliding through the morning air. I wonder what they would say about the full-cream milk that we keep in the refrigerator. They might also like the refrigerators and deep freezers, with which we keep our food fresher for longer. But really, will the peaches and berries that dangle from the treetops of my time do my ancestors the same good that the fruits of their world did them? What unseen mysteries make up the attractive fruit walls of the tomatoes that I so much relish? Two minutes from now, if my hunger were to drive me to the coffee shop downtown and I were to order a fruit or vegetable salad, would I be doing myself any good or perhaps any harm? In present times, we live in a man-made world. The environment is just one big toy tainted by human fingerprints. Look carefully at your frame and at your surroundings the very flesh on your bones might even be artificial Our thanks need to go to modern artificial fertilizers, for the juicy turgid leaves and fleshy midribs that are characteristic of the cabbage and the lettuce, which my younger siblings despise so much. In our quest to feed the exploding human population, we hardly take into account the delicate and essential balance of the mineral requirements of plants and crops. Countless species of plants are cleared from their natural habitats, to make way for endless rows of spinach or beetroot. The favoured plants are left with little or no plants with which to compete for water and soil nutrients. This may sound like an inestimable advantage. But for the plants, a lack of competition also means a lack of the extra plant roots and stems which provide adequate soil-cover for the prevention of soil erosion which rids the soil of its essential nutrients. The mineral salts, which the crops are supposed to absorb, end up being eroded. So, in an effort to make up for the lost nutrients which the now sterilised soil cannot provide, we feed nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to the soil in the form of NPK fertilisers. But what about the iron, magnesium and even the copper requirements of the plants? Those are ignored, because it seems the asparagus and the green peppers of today still come as green as ever and the overwhelming increase in agricultural production means that I can have more shreds of cabbage in my salads. Hurray!!!... That, I think, is a very pleasant fact to know, if only we can ignore the fact that between 1978 and 1991, vegetables lost fifty-seven per cent of their zinc an element needed for the proper functioning of the immune and male reproductive systems. After all, living in a world full of wandering infertile males is a small price to pay for having all those extra delicacies on our plates, isnt it? How about the fact that

between 1940 and the present, vegetables have lost about half of their normal calcium content? It isnt such a big deal to walk around with leg bones that have been bent by a severe form of rickets; neither should it bother us to stand in front of the mirror every morning and watch all our teeth gradually wear off, right? Oh! And who cares, if our greens have lost a quarter of their iron content; we can do without haemoglobin in our red blood cells, cant we? It sounds absurd to think that such few flaws in our modern farming methods can cause such drastic and unfavourable changes to the nutritional value of our foods. Maybe, the statistics are wrong, dont you think?... The truth is, our flaws do not end on the fields; they go much further. Our farming methods may be robbing our crops of their precious vitamins and minerals, but what about the stories of long journeys that the shy peas on the grocery shelves have to tell us? How I wish tomatoes could talk! Then they could tell me about how they are gently picked from their stalks and neatly washed, only to be shoved into the gloomy and yet hot back of a ready van. We will probably never know how much the long rides to the groceries frustrate and wear them out and how their not-so-comfortable positions just squeeze the vitamins out of them! The transportation of foods over long distances, has been identified as one of the reasons for the depreciation of their freshness. Nutritionists believe that fresh fruits and vegetables are more likely to contain the most vitamins. So what does this say about the carrots and the cauliflowers that spend a night or two in the back of a truck and suddenly find themselves on supermarket shelves in Cape Town? We might need to make a few changes to our farming methods and the means by which our delicate food sources are transported, but really, is that all? How about ourselves? Our psychology and our habits. As a developing species of life, our levels of superficiality reach ever-growing heights with every passing second. The preparation of food has become more of an art than a necessary stage in the process of nutrition. Under which of the six food groups does salad dressing for example, fall? I would like to know. Because in our sweet-smelling mixture of shredded vegetables, there is always that glistening presence of salad dressing, smiling foolishly up at us. Yet all it does is increase the amount of calories in our salads and dilute the essential vitamins and mineral salts present. In order to make our meals look more like a sketch of a beautiful landscape by Picasso, we grind our vegetables, chop them and sometimes, shape them into desired shapes, unawaringly exposing a greater surface area of the food to oxidation and allowing for the destruction of constituent vitamins. Life in the twenty-first century, often leaves one with little time for leisure. After leaving for work early in the morning, Mummy never returns home in time for the seven oclock news. So she always wakes up very early to prepare the childrens lunch and supper. When she is done, she neatly sets everything on the dining table and then hurriedly leaves for work. The food normally stands on the table for about eight hours, giving the vitamins more than enough time to decompose Finally, the children arrive home from school. And since the main course is often too cold, they place it in the microwave oven and immediately begin tucking into their dessert. There are usually a few stewed carrots on the dessert plate, but their Vitamin A has normally ended up in the sink, together with cooking fat in which they were stewed. The mustard in the hot-dog always flirts casually with the tongue. The children just like its attractive yellow colour which it owes to the sneaky Tartrazine. But what Mummy does not know is that the chemist who lives across the street refers to

Tartrazine as E102. Mummy does not know how much the chemist loathes those incredible migraine headaches that E102 is notorious for. And she keeps wondering why little George always has an asthma attack minutes after eating his hot-dog. Yes. Preservatives and stabilisers lurk in our canned peas. Amaranth, Potassium Benzoate, Quinoline Yellow, Indigo Carmen and a hundred others. Silent poisons lurk in the tempting juices of our canned strawberries! Manufacturing industries interrupt our television-viewing with messages about banana-flavoured margarine and freshly baked beans in tomato sauce, when all the want to do is sell us some cancer and brain damage So, will a salad of the future be any food for you, or for me? Yes that is what the doctor said. He even screamed at me: Eat your greens!!! They are still beneficial for your health. Well, I actually went through the pains of visiting a food processing plant and discovered that Vitamin C is actually added to certain processed fruits before they are canned. It is also used as a preservative, to keep frozen peaches and other fruits from darkening. So now, I am supposed to be more than satisfied with the extra Vitamin C that is present in my canned fruits. I am expected to be proud of the fact that I was conceived in the world of refrigerators and deep freezers. I am supposed to smile because thanks to genetic engineering, the gene that controls the rotting process in my vegetables, has been rendered inactive and my vegetables can now withstand the rigours of transportation better But what should I say about the fact that there is now twenty-two per cent less potassium, nineteen per cent less copper and fifty per cent less sodium in my vegetables and fruits? Should I lick my lips at the sight of an attractive vegetable salad bathed in carcinogens? My food is supposed to sustain the breath in me, till maybe some man-made catastrophe in the uncertain future wipes me off this planets surface. So why do molecules of Erythrosine dance around in my fruit salad, ready to cause havoc in my thyroid gland. Who can tell what poisons and toxins will be embedded in our foods in the years to come? Should I be surprised if I put on the television right now and hear about a deliberate food-poisoning in a war-torn country, that is claiming millions of lives? I can hear the furious fain clattering on the roofs above my head. Let me go pull the curtains aside a take a peep at the falling rain Out there in the street is growling yellow van, on its way to a place I do not know. The words SUNRISE VEG are inscribed on the side of the van. I can see a drawing of a pea pod on the glass window at the back and the mist of thick black smoke oozing from the rear of the vehicle, as it speeds off into the gloomy horizon. It leaves its misty smoke behind, to ascend through the falling drops of water, into the unhappy sky. There, it will forge an alliance with the pure rain and turn it into a sharp corrosive acid. Somehwere back on the street side, from where the van came, tiny asparagus leaves are catching raindrops in the wet brown fields. They will keep swaying in the wind, till the sky smirks upon them and spits onto them that strong acid Only God know what it will do to them, or to the people whose lungs will dilate in sweet anticipation, should those helpless leaves survive, to wilt in their aroma, in the heat of the kitchen