"Organically Correct"

Let me paint you a scene from a recent night in the restaurant I work at as a server. A table was trying to decide on dessert. Their options were fairly limited, from my view- Affogato (vanilla gelato doused in hot espresso), nectarine sorbetto, or chocolate cake with a scoop of chocolate gelato…I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Is your chocolate fair-trade?” asked one guest.

Another piped in, “What about the nectarine sorbetto? Is it made from fresh nectarines? Are they local? Are they organic? What farm do you get them from?”

And yet another, “I don’t eat any corn syrup. Does any of this have corn syrup in it? What about gluten? I’m not on a gluten free diet, but you can never be sure.”

“Actually, I’ll have the Affogato,” resumed guest number one, “Do you use fair-trade espresso? Where do the vanilla beans come from?”

“Oh, no dairy for me,” says guest number two, “WAY to many hormones. Oh, I’d also like a latte (assuming your espresso is fair-trade), so that needs to be soy. Organic soy…you can never trust those GM soybeans.”

While this is an extreme case, I am confronted with the realities of people’s heightened awareness in food politics every day. The phrase “organically correct” has increasingly been creeping into the public’s lexicon in describing food manufacturing companies, restaurants, and even themselves. This term obviously must be expanded to encompass the large variety of “correct” eating habits—local, vegetarian, etc. When you read Michael Pollan’s An Omnivore’s Dilemna, it becomes blatantly obvious that “organic” does not even begin to cover the bases when it comes to ethical eating.

I am overjoyed that people have been paying more attention to what they eat, but we must also consider the cost of this consumer consciousness. If being “organically correct” means that you can no longer enjoy your friend’s backyard BBQ because you don’t know the provenance of the meat in your hamburger; or that you must forgo eating a slice at a class pizza party because you are pretty sure those veggies have been drenched in pesticides; or you have to pass up that beautifully fragrant pineapple at the grocery store …is it all worth it? Forgive the run-on sentence, but it seems that the more I learn about the current food system, the less I want to eat. And so I must ask, does framing your food choices within a context of political and ethical living take too much of the pure enjoyment out of food?

The answer is different for everyone, perhaps depending on your level of commitment. Those people at my restaurant? They left disappointed, without dessert or coffee. What would you do?