Pass the Ascorbyl Palmitate, Please!
by Gilbert Oskaboose

What the hell's going on out there?

Picked up a box of bacon-flavoured crackers at the store today - and made the mistake of reading the"Ingredients List" only AFTER I ate four or five of them.

I'm not sure what enriched flour, vegetable oil and shortening are - and haven't got a clue what the rest of the ingredients were.

There was something called potato flour which contained [POTATO (that seemed logical enough), and MONOCLYCERIDES. SODIUM PHOSPHATE, SODIUM BISULPHITE, CITRIC ACID; MAY CONTAIN SODIUM STEAROYL-2-LACTYLATE, ASCORBIC ACID, BHA,BHT, ASCORBYL PALMITATE], YELLOW SUGAR, SALT, MODIFIED MILK INGREDIENT, AMMONIUM BICARBONATE, WHEAT GLUTEN, SODIUM BICARBONATE, SOYA LECITHIN, HYDROLYZED PLANT PROTEIN and PROTEASE.

Incredible! And that was only in one lousy little box of crackers. By the time I got through reading the ingredients list of the rest of the stuff in our cupboard I was in a state of shock. My vision blurred. I got tingles where I shouldn't tingle. I tried to call 911 - and we don't even have that service in this area.

It's no wonder people are dying like flies, disease is pandemic and each generation in Indian Country gets progressively weaker. Add the chemicals in that one box of crackers to the chemical ingredients in the rest of our groceries, multiply that by the number of years we're been
eating this crap and you start getting the big picture. If "you are what you eat," then what are we becoming . . .chemical warehouses...toxic waste sites...?

That may not be far from the truth. At the mouth of the St. Lawrence River - a.k.a. the sewer of North America - dead beluga whales that have washed up on the beaches are legally "toxic waste sites" and have to be disposed of accordingly. A California nurse died at an operating table when she was overcome by "toxic fumes emanating" from a living patient. In Brazil ten year -old female children were found to be developing breasts and pubic hair. The problem was traced back to growth hormones in beef cattle.

Nothing is safe anymore - not even our daily bread. When I was a kid Mother used to bake bread twice a week. If we didn't eat that bread within two or three days it got dry, hard, mouldy and was fed to the squirrels. Last year a box of " angel-cake" fell behind our fridge and was lost for two months. When we found it again that unholy thing was as moist and "fresh" as the day we bought it.

In the old days tomatoes were big, juicy and delicious. Besides good eating they made dandy ammunition in tomato fights. Anyone hit with a modern tomato could be badly injured. They've been chemically and genetically engineered to be insect resistant, temperature-proof, be able to travel well and have a shelf life that would make Methuselah jealous. They look and feel like little pink cannonballs - and taste like wet cardboard.

I don't even want to think about what's in some of those "processed" lunchmeat packages. I'm still confused over the cryptic message on one package of mock chicken that reads: DOES NOT CONTAIN PORK. Well, thank you very much, seeing how I was looking for chicken in the first place, and not pork.

What in the hell does MAY OR MAY NOT CONTAIN ANIMAL BY-PRODUCTS mean?

What does MAY OR MAY NOT mean? Is "something" in there or not? And what are animal by-products? Is that chicken lips...a pig's nose...a cow's wahzoo...what? This is really scary stuff.

So what are we going to do about it? I don't know. I'm no expert, just an unhealthy old Indian writer on a rant. An elder once told me that "if you can't read the label, then maybe you shouldn't be eating the contents." Sounds like good advice.

In the meantime, pass the Bicarbonate of Whatever, I don't feel so good.