Brushbails musings on Land, Food and Taste

To retain some light relief in such serious subjects, we have introduced an imaginary character to help us all see the world in a different light. Where we got his name from we will leave up to you !

I am Brushbail, the visiting alien from the planet Zog. I have landed in a supermarket car park and am hungry so have wandered in. My race is far more advanced than yours, we eat to enjoy food, keep healthy, happy and strong. I wander the racks of food but am perplexed, because my sensors pick up that 70% of the food in the store is actually bad for me, laden with saturated fat, sugar, salt, dyes, food colourants and traces of lethal pesticides. The food has often been cooked and changed to such a level that its nutrition and health giving benefits are close to zero. In the store are many parents pushing young babies and toddlers and I wonder is this an experiment to show what not to eat, which is why there is a shop selling medicine called a Pharmacy at the door.

I try to look for healthy food, organic, free of pesticides, but am told such food is too expensive for the many. I surf my intranet and am staggered by how much health care costs in the West and feel I must have made a mistake, if healthy goods are too expensive why is this planet spending much more on health care than it would take to produce and buy the healthy food. I am told I am only a simple alien and that this planet uses a god like law called economics which governs supply and demand.

I ask why the planet doesn’t produce lots of healthy food to be made into healthy products and cut off the supply of unhealthy products through a primitive mechanism you call ‘taxes’, but am informed that you value free choice. Many people without what you call ‘money’ (a system we abandoned millennia ago) are not free to choose what health care they receive though as they cannot afford it under your system. It’s all very confusing. I am told that economics is too complex too understand but it just seems plain stupid to me. People make unhealthy food , get sick then spend a fortune (I like that word and may take it back to Zog) trying to get better whilst still eating the unhealthy food. I will say one thing for you humans; you have a sense of humour, though it’s a little black for my taste.

I pick up a bottle of cider which has a picture of a lovely English apple orchard at blossom time, but am alarmed when my sensors pick up that the drink is made mostly from corn syrup and sugar with only a small amount of concentrate from apples from abroad, with none from England. I am confused that what you call ‘marketing’ to sell me the product is actually misleading me to make the product seem something that it is not. I ask whether this is a special product to test how sugar attacks your teeth and ask what the product is to see if I can improve the way it is sold but am told not to be so stupid. I therefore use my nanopod to rearrange the marketing on the bottle of cider and walk off with a smile. Rather than orchards it shows blackened teeth, industrial corn syrup production and a man with a bag of money throwing one apple into the mix at the end, then turning and smiling with a toothless grin. I am happy that now people understand the product a lot more will buy it so I have done you humans a good turn after all.

I decide that I have been so successful that I will rearrange the marketing on all products in the store to show what they really are, to help your ‘free choice’. I am alarmed when there are screams in the shop because the biscuits in particular which are mostly saturated fat, now sport nice pictures of clogged arteries on their wrappers, and the cakes show rotting teeth, and the fruit, cancerous growths caused by the pesticide residues on their skins. The toys show little children being poisoned by chemical fumes.

The Manager of the store is very angry and throws me out, but on the way I still manage to ask why cigarette packets showing diseased lungs saying this product will probably kill you appear to be normal and an accepted part of the shopping experience.

You humans, you crack me up.

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