Six Arils

This morning, as I was harvesting the seed-like fruit (arils) of a pomegranate, I thought of the Greek myth of Persephone. In the simplified story that I heard as a child, she was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the underworld. She was told that she could leave if she ate nothing while she was there. However, because she ate six pomegranate seeds, she would have to spend half of her days in the underworld and half on earth. This was an explanation for why it was warm and verdant for half of the year and dying and cold during the other half. Her presence caused things to grow. Her absence caused them to wither.

Persephone ate only six seeds. As I painstakingly removed the arils from my fruit, I thought about how one could decide to eat so few because of the effort of removing them. I also recalled that I had seen plastic containers of ready-to-eat arils in the local supermarket. For a much higher price, you don't have to go to any effort and can have a plethora of fruit. If Persephone had lived in the modern ate, let's just say that our winters would be about two years long as she could effortlessly shovel handfuls of them into her face.

When I see plastic containers of prepared fruit or vegetables, I think about a lot of things. First, I realize that there are people out there for whom money is less valuable than time. I also know that these are the same people who have moderate to high amounts of road rage as they rush home after work and display enormous impatience with anything that slows them down. When they get home, they often use that time to putz around on the internet, text people, or watch T.V. They value that time, but they don't do anything valuable with it.

The whole idea behind offering ready-to-eat "fresh" food is that it will compel people who otherwise wouldn't go to the hassle of spending a few minutes preparing it. It may get them to eat more healthily than they otherwise would. In my parents' days, and before that, this was accomplished with canned fruit and vegetables. Packaged "fresh" produce is a step up, though it's still not as good as dealing with it yourself.

I thought about the reduced nutrition when I put my arils, which I'd harvested using a method in which you take apart the pomegranate under water in a bowl, in a strainer to get as much water off of them as possible. If there is too much moisture, the chances that they'll get musty or moldy is increased so it's good to get them somewhat dryer. In the past, I've found they can get a little funky very quickly if you're not careful. If the arils are sold in plastic sealed containers in stores, there must be something mixed in to treat them so they don't go bad for awhile. Whatever that is, it's probably in small enough amounts that it doesn't have to be listed (like a minor and weak bleach solution), but it's also probably not good for you.

Mainly though, I thought about how buying our food as we do removes us from the process of preparation and discourages us from ever learning how to do things for ourselves. One of my friends once posted on Facebook that she wanted a quick and easy dinner. I recommended she have an egg with some avocado. She reminded me that she doesn't like eggs, a situation which is informed largely by her irrational fear that one day she'll crack one open and a half-formed baby chick will be inside, and informed me that she doesn't know how to slice avocado. I, once again and with just as much futility, assured my friend that the eggs you buy in markets are not fertilized and told her how easy it is to slice avocado once you learn the technique.

My friend didn't heed what I said about either the eggs or avocados. She didn't believe what I said about the former and couldn't be bothered with the latter. If she had had a long history of food preparation, cutting and slicing an avocado would have seemed a trivial exercise. With little in the way of deep cooking experience, it seemed by comparison to just buying something pre-made to be a huge and troublesome to manage.

Some time ago, I read pieces about several people who worked on developing a "soylent" formula for food. Essentially, they wanted to make a mix of nutrients that would provide all of the necessary calories and macro and micro nutrients to just guzzle down. The idea behind this was to chuck out all of the "hassle" of shopping and preparing for food and just ingest a powder mixed with water for sustenance. At present, I think people value the taste of food enough that they aren't ready to go quite so far as to drink a sludge of prepared nutrients, but they are more than ready to exchange freshness for convenience.

Finally, I have concerns about people losing track of how much they eat when things are served to them ready-to-eat. After I finish digging through the flesh of my pomegranate, I have some idea of exactly how many arils come in one fruit. The same goes for a peach or an apple. When I do it myself, I can conceptualize portions. If you buy a container of prepared fruit, you have no idea how many pieces it represents. It becomes far easier to overeat, and, yes, you can eat too much fresh fruit. It's good for you, but there are a lot of calories in fruit as well. They are good calories, but you can lose a sense of how  to balance your diet when you're buying a quantity of pre-cut slices. 

I'm not a food Luddite, mind you. Though I rarely buy cut and peeled fruit (and frankly find the idea kind of awful as I think it's got to be drying out or chemically treated), I do buy some frozen food on occasion like mashed squash and I pick up bags of broccoli florets at Costco (removed from their stems). Usually, I buy these things when I'm in exhausted or feeling sick or am using these things for a specific end which doesn't necessarily require the freshest produce (like making broccoli soup). There is a place for ready-to-eat produce, but I don't think it should be the main or only way of consuming such food.