Fast Food Revisited

We vegetarians tend to ignore fast-food restaurants. Oh, we know they're around, of course. Who could miss the tacky architecture, the cheap building materials, the garish colors, the plastic, and the acres of free parking? But there are so many of them that they all tend to meld into the entropy of the suburban landscape. No self-respecting vegetarian would patronize these places, and it's only when the wind blows in the right (wrong?) direction, giving us a whiff of air thick with rancid grease, that we say to ourselves, "Oh my god, there's a KFC over there!"

I have been pretty successful in ignoring fast-food restaurants for the past 25 years. I do, though, admit to having dined at the Wendy's salad bar a few times when dragged there by others. (My parents were big Wendy's fans). It was always an experience.

When your only knowledge of fast food comes from what you see on television, it's quite a shock to actually walk into one of those restaurants. The first thing I always notice is that everything is covered with a sticky film that I guess comes from being repeatedly coated with grease and wiped down by wash rags. Tasty. And the high school kids behind the counter don't look anything like their counterparts (that's a pun) on television. Where are the fit bodies, the tailored uniforms and the perky smiles? Why doesn't anyone at the real restaurants seem to care about their jobs or their customers? And how come the manager, a young man with bad acne in a short-sleeved, lime-green "dress" shirt, can't string two coherent sentences together when he's yelling at his employees? Television makes working in a fast-food restaurant seem like valuable training for bright young people on their way to Congress. In real life one can see that this is where our society warehouses the undereducated and the less fortunate—condemning them to a life of struggle on a minimum wage.

Then, of course, there is the food. Television makes fast-food burgers seem the size of Mount Olympus, sizzling off the grill and topped with a mound of carefully-placed condiments. The real thing—haphazardly thrown together, mushed into a paper wrapper or Styrofoam box, and then left to rot on a warming tray—is quite a different story. Is this what people come in here for, I always wonder? Or are they on a never-ending search for that perfect burger they see on the television screen?

It's been so long since I've visited Wendy or Ronald or the Colonel that I thought it might be time to reeducate myself on the fast-food industry. No, I'm not going to try out any of the food, but I thought a little research might be in order. Here are some of the things I found:

• For his marvelously entertaining documentary Super Size Me, director Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's' food for thirty days. The result? He gained more than 20 pounds and stressed his liver to the brink of failure.
  
• A lot of people seem to be just like Morgan. Seven percent of the US population visits McDonald's each day, and 20 to 25 percent eat in some kind of fast-food restaurant.
  
• Research has shown that children consume an average of 126 more calories on days when they eat at a fast-food restaurant. That difference would translate into a weight gain of 13 pounds in one year.
  
• In 2003, the CDC declared obesity the most important public-health issue in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans are now overweight or obese. Obesity increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, and children and teenagers are contracting this "adult-onset" diabetes at a rapidly increasing pace. In Texas, we may have the first generation in which the parents will have longer life expectancies than their kids, as obese children who develop diabetes before 14 years of age can expect their lifespan to be reduced by 17 to 29 years.
  
• McDonald's likes children as customers very much. So much so that it has become the largest private operator of playgrounds in the U.S. In some urban areas McDonald's may be the only safe place in the neighborhood for children to play.
  
• Fast-food companies do have their good side. McDonald's corporation contributed $5 million to the victims of hurricane Katrina. While that seems very generous, the gift amounts to less than 0.13% of the $3.9 billion in cash the company generated from its operations last year.
  
• Money buys influence, and occasionally makes for strange bedfellows. Among the people making pitches on the McDonald's website are Bob Greene, Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer (Hey, wasn't it Oprah who swore on national television she'd never eat another hamburger?), and Dean Ornish, MD (Isn't he the same guy who's been preaching a near-vegan diet to eliminate heart attacks?!). Go figure.
  
• One of the main reasons people flock to fast food, of course, is that it is an inexpensive way to get lots of calories. If I were so inclined (I'm not) I could satisfy my daily caloric needs with McDonald's hamburgers for $21.06 a day. To get that same number of calories from organic greens (let's say kale) at my local farmers' market I'd have to pay about $61.00!
  

  How come hamburgers bought at a new restaurant with a 2-story built-in playground are only about 1/3 the price of greens bought off the back of an old truck in a parking lot? Lower materials costs, less overhead, easier production, lower advertising budget? Nah. Subsidies, cheap wages, massive scale of production, and even more subsidies? Yup.

In this case, though, you get what you pay for. The relatively expensive kale would have hugely less saturated fat, more protein, and less than half the sodium of the hamburgers. It would also have 45 times the calcium, 191 times the vitamin C and a whopping 34,739 times the vitamin A!

The world of fast food is indeed fascinating. But if you don't mind, I think I'll continue to study it from afar. I'll be in the parking lot, eating my kale.

Expecting Too Much

When I woke up this morning Jack was sitting on my pillow. Jack is the tiny guy with the green hair and chartreuse pants who lives in the back of my head. He tries his best to keep me going in the right direction, but as you can imagine, it's often a losing cause.

"You have a column due," Jack said bluntly. "And I bet you have no idea what to write about, do you?"

I pulled the sheet over my head and moaned. "I never know what to write about. My best years of writing are behind me."

"You never had any 'best years'," he said cryptically. "But don't worry—I can help."

"Swell. In that case I'm brushing my teeth."

Jack followed me into the bathroom, suddenly excited with new ideas. "Hey, why don't you write about that long-term vegan friend of yours who took advantage of you and now isn't your friend anymore."

I shook my head. "That's a sad story about a troubled person. Nobody wants to read about that."

"But it teaches an important lesson," Jack said.

"What? That I'm an idiot?"

"More than that, it shows how we vegetarians tend to give one another the benefit of the doubt, the way the public trusts and idolizes sports heroes. But just because we're good in one thing doesn't make us perfect. Vegetarians can have big faults just like anyone else—look at you for example—and maybe we need to stop expecting too much from one another. I think that would make a fine column."

"That might make a paragraph," I countered. "What else do you have?"

"Well, speaking of expecting too much, you could write about that 'health food' grocery store that's promoting veal sales."

"I'd get sued."

"You wouldn't name them. You could just call them Wh*le F**ds, and no one would ever guess their true identity. You could talk about how, just because they sell tofu and organic lettuce, people expect them to be perfect in other ways too. People expect them to have a conscience and behave in a moral fashion, but of course they're only a big corporation and their morality is no greater or less than that of their customers. Then you could talk about how we expect too much from all of our public and governmental institutions. We expect them to lead us, rather than vice versa."

I glared at Jack. He was being way too heavy-handed for 7:00 in the morning. "What else?" I asked as I turned on the shower. "Remember, people don't like it when I get serious."

Jack thought for a moment, and then held up his miniature finger. "You could write about what your friend Sharon was telling you last week—that even as people become more health-conscious and the selection of 'healthy' foods expands rapidly, it's getting harder and harder for true vegetarians, and especially vegans, to find something to eat. People are expecting too much from the foods they buy—relying on magic words like 'organic' and 'healthy' to protect them. It's almost like 'organic' has displaced 'vegetarian'. And when people expect too much from food processors the quality of our food choices is dictated by marketing concerns and gets reduced to the lowest common denominator. 'Organic chicken' and 'organic beef' are replacing vegetarian foods in the diet, and dairy products—as long as they're 'lowfat'—are used with abandon in just about everything. You could write about what a cop-out this is, and how people need to take responsibility for their own diets, rather than expecting that anything they buy from Wh*le F**ds will be good for them."

"I don't know…" I climbed into the hot shower. "If I used the term 'cop-out' in a column, people would laugh at me."

"They laugh at you anyway." Jack bounded into the shower beside me, his tiny legs straddling the drain and the green food color dripping from his hair down into his face. "Listen," he said, hands on his hips. "I've given you three good ideas, and you don't want to use any of them? Don't you think you could string them together and come up with something that could meet your readers' usual low expectations of you?"

I thought about the idea for a second and rejected it. "Nah," I told him. "There's not a column in any of that material."

I put my face under the hot water. It felt great. Maybe if I stayed in the shower long enough a really good idea for a column would hit me. Then again, maybe I was expecting too much.

The Porcine Persona—Some Highly-Forgettable Pig Facts

Most people I know love pigs. (Note that I am also speaking in the non-gustatory context here.) There's just something charming about the looks and personalities of these wonderful animals. If you are a "pig person" like I am (again in the non-gustatory context), here are a few facts about our porcine brethren (and sistren?) you may find interesting:

· The pig was among the first animals to be domesticated, probably as early as 7000 B.C. Pigs were first introduced to North America in 1539 when Hernando de Soto brought them to the Florida mainland.

· Pigs are remarkably smart. Professor Stanley Curtis of Pennsylvania State University has taught pigs to play computer games by using specially-designed joysticks and offering food rewards for winning results. The pigs like it too. "Nine times out of 10 we have to terminate the session," he says. "Otherwise, they may play all day."

· 277,000 pigs are killed every day in American slaughterhouses.

· A 250 lb. live weight hog will yield approximately 120 pounds of "take home" meat. By-products from the rest of the animal might show up around the average American home in these products: antifreeze, artist's brushes, bone china, buttons, cellophane, cement, chalk, crayons, fabric dye, fertilizer, floor waxes, glass, glue, insecticides, insulation, matches, ornaments, plastics, porcelain enamel, rubber, upholstery, water filters, and weed killers.

·
The University of Nebraska offers these helpful hints to America's youth: "One basic task involved in the 4-H Swine Project that continually provides difficulty to many 4-H members, leaders and parents is properly ear notching project pigs. While for some this is a matter-of-fact task, others have great difficulty understanding the purpose or practice of notching. …If pigs can be notched when their tails are docked, or at 1-3 days old, the task is much easier. If you allow pigs to become large (100 lbs), the task can become considerably demanding mentally and physically. …When combining ear notching with other pig processing, consider doing the notching last, as it tends to cause more bleeding than other procedures, such as teeth clipping, naval care, injections or tail docking."

·
"The main job of a pork producer is to make sure the pigs are healthy, comfortable, and well fed." —from the National Pork Producers Council's "Farmtastic Voyage" presentation for kids.

· The PIGVISION Institute in Melbourne, Australia has a project they call PORCONTROL (Pig Operated Remote Control), which will install the switch (button) of a pedestrian traffic light in a piggery in Australia, and link it via the Internet with a set of traffic lights in Europe. During a 24-hour event, which will be run in conjunction with an art festival or symposium, pigs in Australia will effectively stop traffic in Europe.

· From "Ask an Expert" from Porknet at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: "Pork from boars, or uncastrated male pigs at slaughter weight, may have an odor during cooking that is very offensive to many people. This is called a 'boar odor' or a 'tainted' odor. This is the primary reason for castration of male pigs destined for slaughter…"

· Speaking of odors… Manure Matters, a newsletter addressing livestock environmental issues, is now available on the web at http://www.ianr.unl.edu/manure/archive.html (Wouldn't you love to get a business card from the editor of Manure Matters?! I wonder what their corporate logo is?)

· The National Pork Producers Council brags that a three-ounce serving (that's tiny!) of "pork tenderloin" has only 4.1 grams of total fat. They don't mention the fat in those cuts of "pork" much more likely to show up on the average dinner table. The same size serving of "ham", for example, would have 12.9 grams of fat (60% of its calories from fat). Three ounces of "bacon" would have 15.6 grams of fat (77% of its calories from fat).

· Pigs may not get representation in the hallowed halls of Congress, but the people raising them do. The Pork Industry Congressional Caucus (Pork Caucus) is an informal bipartisan group of 26 Senators and 48 House members considered to be "pork industry friends", and who routinely assist the industry on important legislative, regulatory and political issues. I guess this is where the term "legislative pork" comes from.

· According to the lore of the Maine seacoast, it's bad luck to paint a pig on a boat. The boat will sink.

· Since pigs are genetically engineered to grow fast, casting for the title role in the movie Babe posed a special problem. Pigs were trained in several groups because they could only be filmed while they were 16 to 18 weeks old. To make all these animals look alike, makeup artist Carolyn Tryer glued a small tuft of dark hair to the piglets and dyed their lashes black to highlight their eyes. Many vegetarians praised the "subliminal vegetarian message" in the film, and actor James Cromwell (Farmer Hoggett in the movie/a vegan in real life) appeared at a number of animal rights events, including a tribute "Pignic" sponsored by the Farm Sanctuary in California. After seeing the movie, Oprah Winfrey was inspired to publicly question her consumption of "pork".

· In 1996, the year after the movie Babe came out, per capita annual consumption of "pork" in the United States was 45.9 pounds, down from 52.1 pounds in 1980. …Hey, that's a start!

Dreams

A lot of people claim to have a recurring dream where they find themselves naked in front of a large group of people. I've never had that dream, although I'm sure it must be a very exciting experience. I have had the other classic dream—the one about being unprepared for the big final exam. In my version, though, it's usually the last week of the semester, I haven't yet been to any of my six classes, they're always in impossible subjects (history, for example), and I don't even know how to find the classrooms. I wander around aimlessly, asking other students for help, and wondering how I got myself into such a fix. (Actually, this dream is remarkably like my real-life college experience.)

There's another recurring nightmare that I have, and this one involves vegetarianism. I don't know if other vegetarians share this problem, but I sometimes dream that I'm eating meat. The dream starts out simple enough—the meat is just there in front of me, and for some reason it seems right and appropriate to take a bite. Once I get it into my mouth, though, there's that moment of realization. "Oh my god," I scream, "what am I doing?!" I always wake up in cold sweats after the meat-eating dream, and after I calm down it strikes me as very odd that I could have a horrible nightmare about doing something most people do, with pleasure, several times a day.

I have lots of good dreams about vegetarianism too, but they tend to be of the "daydream" variety. Here are a few I've had lately:

• I'm riding in a plane, and after we get up to altitude the flight attendant comes on the intercom: "Thanks for flying United Airlines ladies and gentlemen. We'll be serving lunch on our flight to New York today. In the main cabin our entrée will be rutabaga stew…" A few minutes later the flight attendants come down the aisle. On top of their cart is a huge pot of stew, and they ladle it out into bowls for the passengers, tearing chunks of brown bread off of big loaves to go with it. Wow, I think, this reminds me of the food service they must have had on trains to Siberia in 1927. It certainly is an improvement over modern airline fare!
  
• I dream that the world has gone organic—but since we've all become vegetarians too, that means we use compost rather than cows' manure. In my dream I replace all the toilets in my house with DumpMaster 2000^® politically-correct composting toilets. According to the advertising, it only takes fifteen minutes for the "special biological enzymes" in the DumpMaster 2000^® to turn household sanitary waste into a "rich loam that's perfect for conditioning the soil in your garden, or for adding an earthy flavor to your favorite casserole." I'm so impressed that I become a successful DumpMaster^® franchisee and make millions of dollars.
  
• I dream that I'm on a white-sand beach by a shimmering blue ocean. Suddenly three young ladies appear in bikinis, with perfect tans. Even though they are young enough to be my kid sisters (okay, possibly they are even younger than that), I want to be polite, so I invite them over for tofu at my quaint beach shack. "Goody, goody!" they all coo in unison, following me with pitchers of Mai Tais in their hands. "Muscle-bound lifeguards are okay in their place, but we just love vegans."
  
• I dream that I'm trying to buy health insurance at the offices of a stuffy insurance company. I'm looking across an intimidating wood desk at a stuffy insurance executive. "Our health policy will cost you a thousand dollars a month," he says sternly. When I ask him what medical costs the policy pays for, he says, "Nothing. But if you have our card in your wallet at least the hospital won't leave you to die in the lobby." I point out that coverage like that doesn't seem like a very good deal—especially for a vegetarian in good health. "Vegetarian!" he says. "Why didn't you say so?! Since you have lower risks, we have a special policy for vegetarians. Your premiums are free!"
  
• I dream that I'm in a fancy restaurant for lunch, and I don't see anything vegetarian on the menu. "I'm a vegetarian," I say, wincing in anticipation of the reaction I will probably get. "Can I possibly order the salad niçoise without the tuna, anchovies and eggs?" My waiter nods. "We can do that…" he begins. "We'll add Portobello mushrooms, roasted red peppers, and Italian olive salad, and we'll charge you $3 less." At that point I know I'm dreaming. Too bad I have to wake up.

Vegetarian Travel Series, Episode #14: Vegan Dining in Big City

As one of the great cities of America, Big City has long been known for having some of the very best restaurants in the world. Today, as part of our ongoing travel series, we'll visit a few of the most renowned Big City eateries and see what kind of magic their incredible chefs can stir up for the vegan diner.

The very best place to begin our visit to Big City is with a hearty breakfast at Walter Brennan's. With its selection of incredible egg dishes and homemade pastries, Breakfast at Walter Brennan's^®
has been a Big City tradition for more than 50 years. We settle into the opulent dining room with a strong cup of coffee (sorry, no soymilk available—they must be temporarily out) and ask our waiter what dishes would be good for vegans.

"Huh?"

We explain what "vegan" means, and the waiter shrugs, pointing blankly at the menu. With a little more explanation he is able to offer some helpful suggestions and we're finally ready to order: the fruit cup and white toast, dry. "The cantaloupe is ripe," one member of our group points out. "Very evenly toasted bread," raves another.

After that delicious breakfast a shopping trip down Big City's famous 4th Avenue seems in order. It lightens our wallets, but also perks up our appetites for lunch. We decide to head downtown to the waterfront, and eat at The Seafood House, a quaint restaurant with a seafaring tradition that was once frequented by the likes of Herman Melville and Peter Benchley (though they weren't necessarily there together). We ask the waitress what kind of sandwiches they have.

"Soft-shelled crab and shrimp salad."

We smile and explain our dietary restrictions, after which she shrugs and points blankly at the menu. After a little more explanation she brings us French fries and coleslaw, hold the mayonnaise. The cabbage and potatoes remind us of Ireland, and the famous famine of the mid-19^th Century. How colorful!

We walk off our delicious lunch by spending the afternoon hours in Big City's famous Linkletter-Carney Museum of the Arts. The collection is world-class, but looking at the many still lifes (lives?) leaves us hungry for dinner. After a brief stop at our hotel to freshen up, we take a cab uptown to Palms Up, the famous steakhouse where Herman Melville also used to eat. According to the sign, Palms Up prides itself on serving "huge cuts of aged, prime beef in an atmosphere of quiet sophistication." The big leather chairs are a bit heavy for one person to move, but after we get seated and our eyes adjust to the hickory smoke in the air, we enjoy the wood paneling and the jovial conviviality of all the fat people at the neighboring tables.

We know our vegan diets will be a welcomed challenge for the fine chefs at Palms Up, and we rely on our knowledgeable waiter Edward to guide us through a delicious vegan meal.

"What did you say you people are?" Edward asks.

After a little more explanation Edward shrugs and points blankly at the menu. Still more explanation and a discreet $20 bill (we find out later this is why they named the restaurant Palms Up) put Edward on the right track. He suggests the famous Palms Up salad (hold the bacon bits, hold the cheese, hold the hard-boiled egg, hold the dressing) and the famous Palms Up "twice-baked" stuffed potato (hold the butter, hold the bacon bits, hold the sour cream, hold the "stuffing", no need to bake twice). The dinner is very filling, and when it's time for dessert we're glad that the famous Palms Up cheesecake, when modified to be vegan (hold all ingredients), is remarkably light and airy.

Back at our hotel we're happy and tired after the first day of our visit. We've made wonderful choices, and we've had the kind of rare dining experiences one can only get in world-class establishments. We can't wait to see what culinary delights are in store for us tomorrow, as we explore more of the fine restaurants of Big City!

Conversations with Uncle Danny

Last weekend I went to visit my fictitious, totally made up Uncle Danny at the retirement home where he now lives. Uncle Danny is older than most rocks, and has spent his long life as a soldier, radio newsman, pilot, and international Don Juan. (He claims to have single-handedly liberated the French Riviera in World War II and come home with five French women on an Algerian freighter.)

Did I mention that Uncle Danny is also a vegetarian? Well he is—perhaps as a result of his stint as the spiritual leader of Thailand, or maybe from the years he spent teaching auto mechanics to natives of the Amazon rainforest. Uncle Danny loves being a vegetarian, and knows everything there is to know about the subject. He's the guy I go to whenever I need inspiration.

And so it was that I found myself on Sunday afternoon meeting my uncle in the lobby of his building.

"Whacha got in the bag, kid?" he asked me right away.

"Pistachios."

His eyes lit up and he grabbed the paper bag out of my hands. Uncle Danny loves pistachios. Then I followed him outside into the sunshine, and we sat on a park bench while he pulled apart nuts with his thin, curled fingers.

"Why the long face?" he asked. "You got problems?"

"The world has problems," I answered. "I get depressed every time I pick up a paper. Have you read the news lately?"

"No." He shook his head. "I've found it's usually a bad idea."

"Well, your generation left us the world in reasonably good shape, and we're messing it up big time."

My uncle smiled. "You shouldn't get so upset. Try to live by the words I once discovered excavating the tomb of an ancient Egyptian king: 'Leave your worry on the doorstep and direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.'"

"No Uncle Danny, I believe that was from a popular American song of the 1920s."

He shrugged. "Whatever."

"But Uncle Danny," I persisted. "Have you been hearing all that stuff about the oceans dying, and the grain shortages that have sprung up in Asia because they're raising more cattle? And now the animal waste problem has gotten so bad that even Congress can't ignore it. One of the big food conglomerates is building a hog farm in Utah that will generate as much waste as the entire city of Los Angeles!"

Uncle Danny didn't seem to care. "We're both vegetarians, aren't we?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Well, then. When everyone else decides to follow us—and they will—those problems will go away like magic!"

"You make it sound so easy."

"It is." He tossed a pistachio to a squirrel who had been waiting patiently a few yards away. "Just remember what Winston Churchill said when he consulted me about covert operations during the war: 'What, me worry?'"

"No, I believe it was actually Alfred E. Neuman who said that, in Mad magazine."

"Yes, that's a possibility, too."

"But Uncle Danny, maybe you haven't heard about 'Mad Cow' disease, and all the new strains of E. coli bacteria, and the deadly bird and swine flues from Hong Kong that could wipe us all out any minute. Humankind is only holding on by a thread!"

Uncle Danny dismissed that notion with a wave of his hand. "Aren't you listening, boy? Vegetarianism will solve all those problems too!"

"Sure it will. But how are we ever going to get everyone to be vegetarian?" I asked. "In this crazy world if a person goes on television and says she'll never eat a hamburger again, she gets dragged into court in Texas."

"You're talking about Opera Windows?"

"Oprah Winfrey," I corrected him.

"And the cattlemen who are out to get her?"

"Cattlepersons."

Uncle Danny laughed. "Now, don't you think a smart woman like that is going to make mincemeat out of those 'beef' heads?"

"Well…. You know, you may be right."

"Of course I am. It's just like that ridiculous McLiberal litigation—"

"McLibel."

"—Win or lose, the vegetarian cause gets loads of free publicity."

I'd never thought about it that way. But looking at my uncle, a guy who'd seen just about everything and still viewed the world through the rosiest of lenses, I knew his kind of optimism was not only perfectly sensible, but just what I needed. That was why I was here.

"I hope you didn't want any of these nuts," Uncle Danny said, popping the last pistachio into his mouth. Then his gaze went across the street to the park where some children were playing soccer. "You know, the Mahatma Gandhi once gave me some good advice when we were traveling by train across India. He said: 'Don't worry—be happy.'"

I couldn't stand it any longer. "Uncle Danny, you never met Gandhi in your life, and that line was from a popular song by Bobby McFerrin."

He turned back to me and shrugged, the smile refusing to leave his face.

"Whatever," he said.

Cloning

Well, they've cloned sheep and they've cloned monkeys. Now everyone is asking whether humans will be next. It's the moral dilemma of the year. Of course, the mere fact that this is the question on people's minds should tell us something. Ever notice that nothing becomes an ethical problem until it affects (or potentially affects) humans? Make all the identical tadpoles you want and no one will notice, but threaten to grow little copies of Elvis and that's big news.

Naturally, we vegetarians look at the broader picture. For us the ethical issues associated with biotechnology started a little sooner. For example, we knew genetic engineers were up to no good way back when they planted that "anti-freeze" flounder gene into the "flavr savr" tomato. We tried to tell everyone who would listen that only bad things can happen when we play God and experiment on our fellow creatures. We railed against the whole idea that animals are something that can be created, patented and profited from. But did anyone listen? Of course not!

It's only now—now that it's actually become possible to clone a young Sandra Dee and film a remake of that movie classic Gidget Goes to Poland—that people are starting to take notice. But, of course, it's too late. The juggernaut of genetic engineering is at full speed, and we're standing on the brink of Brave New World. (Pass me some soma please, and while you're at it, you may as well clone me someone to clean out my garage.)

Of course there's the possibility that we're getting this all wrong. Maybe we vegetarians have been focused on the "doom and gloom" aspects of genetic engineering for too long. Maybe we should go with the flow for once in our lives and look on the brighter side of things.

We won't exactly need our sunglasses, but there is some potential light on the horizon. For example, if people are going to experiment on animals anyway, would it be so bad use clones, so that fewer animals could be used to make a statistically valid sample? If people are going to raise animals for food anyway, wouldn't it be better to genetically engineer them to resist, without antibiotics, the diseases they're likely to encounter on the "factory" farm? And what's so terrible about corn genetically engineered to be pest resistant, so we can do away with pesticides?

Of course anyone concerned with animal rights or human health could counter by saying that these "good" things only help to solve problems that humans created in the first place. We don't need animal testing at all. The "vegetarian" model of organic farming is better still. And the biggest medical advances could come very simply if people would only eat healthy food.

How about genetically engineered animals being raised to supply "body parts" for transplantation into humans, you ask? How about people simply signing organ donor cards when they get their drivers' licenses renewed instead.

A recent CNN/Time poll found that 66% of Americans think it is morally wrong to clone animals, and 56% said they would not eat meat from cloned animals. How long should we expect those numbers to last? If hamburger from cloned animals is on our friendly grocer's shelf for 30 cents a pound cheaper than the other stuff, what are people going to choose? Are morals worth 30 cents a pound?

Like it or not, and for better or worse, genetic engineering will play a huge part in our future lives. And when cloning, or any other kind of bio-manipulation of plants and animals, and even humans, becomes commonplace, it will be a moral issue no longer.

How do I know this? From personal experience. I don't shun gorgeous blondes merely because thousands of years of natural selection have accentuated the traits in all of us (…well, not me personally) that people find attractive. I like dogs too, even though greed-driven "genetic engineers" of times long past created them from wolves. And this spring I'll choose seeds for my organic garden from the only kinds available—genetic "hybrids" that are worlds different from their ancestors in the wild. When I see the big, perfect plants they produce I'll think about the "ethical" issues George Washington Carver must have faced, but I won't have any moral misgivings about those things now.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to fear in the future. A hundred years from now cloned sheep will be no big deal compared to the bio-ethics problems facing humankind. Who knows what people will be doing by then, and who knows what they may be "manufacturing" to put on their dinner tables. It's a scary thought.

One thing I know they won't be eating at the end of the next century is the "flavr savr" tomato. After all the fanfare, it will be remembered as the biggest bio-flop of the long-gone 1990's, and will be seen only on display in the Smithsonian Institute. There it will sit—on the shelf between the Tickle Me Elmo doll and the Rubic's cube—juicy and ripe forever.