"I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact,
I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table."
- Rodney Dangerfield
At the moment, I am eating a delicious Delicious Apple while getting ready to
leave (at 3 AM) for my gym. The Delicious apple is the most widely grown species
of apple in the world. Scientists have unraveled the genetic code of the Golden
Delicious apple and have found that it contains more genes (57,000+) than any
other plant. (Although there is some controversy, the human genome is said to
contain between 20,000 and 25,000 genes.)
From the moment that Eve offered Adam a bite of the forbidden fruit, the apple
has been baked in controversy.
First Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden core truth regarding apples. Many
millennia after that, Hippocrates recommended sweet apples as an aid to good
health and digestion.
Thousands of years later, an evil witch poisoned Snow White's bright red apple
and she fell into a coma. At about the same time, a dad (William Tell) was
forced to shoot an apple off of his son's head.
During the thirteenth century, Bishop Albertus Magnus suggested that apple trees
have souls. A few hundred years later, Sir Isaac Newton developed the laws of
gravity after watching an apple fall to the ground. One hundred years ago, J.T.
Stinson's keynote address at the St. Louis Exposition included this line:
"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."
St. Louis then became home to an unsaintly company, Monsanto, that is now
attempting to genetically engineer children's vaccines and medicines into
apples.
Of the many emails I get each day, one or two come from meat eaters intent on
debating serious issues by using convoluted logic. One line of their thinking
often involves the apple.
I have been accused of heinous crimes, including being a broccoli murderer,
carrot torturer, and apple killer. I've just about had all that I can chew
regarding accusations of apple-acide (not to be confused with apple cider).
So, let us explore the very essence of the apple. The act of eating apples is
actually about sexual reproduction. (Theirs, not ours.) Humans have been gifted
with an enormous feeling of pleasure while passing their seed to another during
the act of reproducing the species.
Such must also logically be the way of apples. One must assume that each one of
Mother Nature's living creatures has appropriately been given a similar innate
gift of pleasure during that magic moment.
And what constitutes the climatic moment for an apple tree?
Having her fruit eaten by a mammal, that's what. The apple contains seeds for
the mother-tree's offspring. The mammal enjoys the fruit of her labor by taking
the perfumed fruit containing seeds far from the mother tree. The animal then
becomes an important part of the apple's reproductive cycle by depositing the
apple's seed with a copious amount of organic nitrogen-containing fertilizer to
nurture that seed's growth.
Each summer I reserve a part of my garden for broccoli seeds. The plant produces
beautiful florets, which would make for a wonderful dish when sauteed with a
bulb or two of my organically-grown garlic. However, I allow those plants to
flower and go to seed for two wonderful reasons. First, few flowering plants are
as stunning as the yellow sunburst produced by the broccoli plant. Second, those
flowers are delicious in salads. To the broccoli plant, her be-all and end-all
is to produce seeds. These are her potential children. The act of picking the
plant must then be an act of infinite pleasure to the broccoli's inner psyche.
Premature seed-shedding still provides some pleasure, even in non-plants, for
that is how living creatures have been programmed.
In other words, a broccoli plant lives to be eaten, for in life's final act, she
dies and exists for future generations.
Such is the nature of the broccoli, carrot, apple, orange and strawberry. Give
pleasure to a pear or a peach or bunches of grapes as often as you can. If you
are a vegetarian or vegan,the next time you are accused of being a plant killer,
let those who criticize be aware of nature's perfect plan.
Every day, I enjoy one or smoothies consisting of different fruits and greens
which makes me wonder...am I committing mass floracide, or conducting a fructose
and cal/mag orgy of unprecedented proportions?
Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com
http://www.Twitter.com/TheRealNotmilk
