Spoonfed

Earth Day makes me feel bad, but good

So yesterday was Earth Day.

{{{ Big Hug }}}

I was flipping through the Wall Street Journal while waiting for my car at the shop, and there was an article about how Earth Day is just a huge marketing gimmick. Some representative of an environmental group said, and I'm totally paraphrasing here, that Earth Day is sort of like the woman who pulls up to the grocery store in her gas-guzzling SUV and takes a cloth bag in to buy her organic milk. If this is the best we can do, then the environmental movement has totally failed.

And I thought, "Hey, that's me!"

Really? We've totally failed?

I sort of fretted about it all day, driving around with just me in my All Road. which is not quite an SUV and I feel a little smug about that, but it does cost $70 to fill it up. Then I got home and watched Oprah, and she praised all of us moms for every single little thing, like the cloth bags, and the organic cucumbers, and using rags instead of paper towels to wipe the counter, and the curlicue lightbulbs, and dumping my coffee grounds in the garden that I will someday plant, 'cause if we all do a little, it cumulatively adds up to a lot.

And I felt better. Thanks, O.

And the Democratic National Convention is on a feel-good mission, too. They just sent me an email: "Just in Time for Earth Week, Workshop Teaches Event Planners, Venue Managers and Caterers How to Go Green."

Those nasty genetically modified cans of Ragu keep me up at night

A while ago, I did a post on professional opinionist Jackie Avner's* piece urging us to just say no to organic foods. It's just an invention of some good marketers, she said, it doesn't really mean anything.

Well, these are things that keep me up at night.

Dr. Oz, who everyone knows is the most trustworthy, tell-it-like-it-is Doctor on the planet, had a guy on his XM radio show last week saying otherwise.

Jeffrey Smith, author of Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods said that... well, really, the title of his book says it all. Genetically modified crops like corn, cotton, canola and soy are something we should avoid. This is important because something like 90% of all packaged foods in the U.S. are made with genetically modified corn or canola oil, or soy products. And like it or not, we're a nation of packaged food eaters. No one will admit to it, but just watch people in the check-out lines at King Soopers.

There's no regulation of genetically modified foods except for the Organic label. Organic means it's not genetically modified.

If you take a can of Ragu spaghetti sauce, for instance, you'll see it's made with canola oil. Pretty much a dead giveaway that it's made with genetically modified canola oil, although there's nothing in the U.S. that says it must be labeled as such (unlike Europe). Take a can of Ragu light, however, and it's made with olive oil. Olive oil is safe, it hasn't yet been genetically modified.

See, a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. Enough to wake me up at 5 am. Anybody else worry about these things?

*Jackie Avner is a regular in The Denver Post's Opinion section. She writes about hospice, caucusing, hormones in milk, the health care crisis and the myth of organic food, among other things. I believe she is really an top secret SAT Test Author in charge of coming up with argumentative essay topics.

A New Earth

I was at dinner the other night with other parents. All of us college educated. One of the Moms said she loved Oprah, yadda yadda, and I asked her if she was reading the latest Oprah bookclub selection, A New Earth.

She said no, that she didn't read them anymore because Oprah chose books that were too hard for her.

A bit of an exaggeration, but I thought, this is a good testament to Oprah. She doesn't dumb-down the books for her audience. Love in the Time of Cholera is an extremely challenging novel, even for us English majors.

And A New Earth isn't a novel at all. It could be categorized as a self-help book, but it's not quite that either. It's a tough read. It's a bit philosophy, a bit spirituality, a bit self-help, and I'm only on Chapter 4.

The author, Eckhart Tolle, is going to be teaching a class on the book online, and something like 50,000 people have already signed up.

And just what is the book about?

It's about human consciousness. What it is, how to access it more deeply, how to transcend the ego. Again, I'm just on Chapter 4.

Eckhart Tolle seems to be in the category of the Ken Wilber -- the prolific author and leader of the Integral Institute (who lives right here in Denver) who is shaping the theories of the evolution of human consciousness. (They'd probably both disagree with that characterization.)

Oprah Watch

Since I moved from my downtown loft to our urban-suburban neighborhood, two things of importance have happened: (1)I've been initiated into the sorority of Stapleton moms, and (2) I've become an Oprah fan.

That's right.

Back when I worked at a San Francisco ad agency, clients fit into two categories: those who bought ad space on an Oprah property, and those who didn't. I don't think, in those days, that I had ever watched a complete Oprah show.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I'm a stay at home mom who frequently TIVO's Oprah. I listen to Oprah on XM. I read (but am not yet a subscriber) O magazine. I love Nate, Dr. Oz, Marianne Williamson, Bob Greene. I love Oprah.

And now I spot Oprah-influences all over the place.

After she did her show on saving the environment, the Stapleton Moms list exploded with a conversation on the topic that is going on its 7th day.

When she did her show on her favorite things, I started seeing moms wearing Elie Tahari pants.

When Dr. Oz demonstrated how to use the Neti pot, I saw them displayed prominently at Wild Oats and Whole Foods.

And yesterday, at King Soopers, for the very first time ever, I saw no less than 4 people with cloth shopping bags. The little checkout girl pulled them out with complete bewilderment, and the woman in front of me had to instruct her what to do with them.

So if you have any doubt about the power of Oprah to get our next president elected, just watch.