Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

July 19, 2011

Hrrm. I don’t know about this. On the one hand I can see the advantages to knowing where your dinner came from. On the other hand there are hot dogs, and some things we are better off not knowing.

I love steak but all I really need to know is that it came from a cow and not a giraffe or an okapi. (Endangered species meat is tough and stringy.) I suppose if you pin me down I’d like to know that my meal came from a cow that grazed on grass as opposed to manure. Of course, with all the steroids, hormones, and bizarre chemical cocktails that go into animal feed the manure might be preferable. Unless it came from a cow fed on steroids, hormones, and bizarre chemical cocktails so the point is really moot. I guess the bottom line is that you never really know what goes into your food unless you grow your own. And since I live in apartment I am not raising my own cattle. I tried that with bacon and it didn’t work.

Unless your name is Watson or Crick (google ’em) what do you know about DNA? “Say, that cow has a mighty nice double helix to its molecular DNA structure.” There is a point, and this is it, where you are a pretentious dwad if you need to know something as esoteric as your dinner’s chromosomal history. Right now there are people who insist on knowing what herd the cow came from, what county, what it ate, if it was left out in the rain, and really, why? Look I get that some cows eat better than others and that affects what goes into your body. Fine. But do I really need to know the genetic pedigree of my cheeseburger? The cholesterol will kill me first.

I prefer my steaks medium-well and anonymous. All this madness about knowing your meat’s pedigree, combined with the further and continued use of genetic modifications to cattle can only end badly. Sure, those cows are content now, but what happens when Aldo the cow says “no”? I have seen Planet of the Apes. Soon we may all be mute lab rats to a race of talking, horse riding, human-enslaving cows. Life will be one big Gary Larsen Far Side gag. I only pray that none of this comes about before next week. I have a reservation at Peter Luger’s.

I think Chick-Fil-A knows something...

Tags: bmj2k, cattle, cows, Douglas Adams, dwads, Far Side, fine dining, food, Gary Larsen, genetics, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, meat, Mr. Blog, Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride, Mr. BTR, Planet of the Apes, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, steak, steroids