Truemors
Did you hear about the melamine warnings? Sure, Health Canada has issued a few on a handful of products and recalled some others. But Mark Kastel, co-director of The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based advocacy group, told The Globe and Mail, "There's no guarantee that just because we haven't seen [melamine in many food products] that we won't." He said that the fact that melamine has been found in animal feed and a host of other products coming from China should be setting off alarm bells in consumers' minds.
Because of the melamine warnings, we gave out granola bars as treats for Halloween. My partner didn't buy enough boxes, so what to do? I looked in the kitchen and thought we could hand out apples. I'm a child of the seventies though, and felt creeped out by my own idea. Remember the razor-in-the-apple urban myth?
Total "road apples" of course, but I grew up with a fear of seasonal candy not individually packaged. Mom would recoil in terror and fling the offending treat into the trash, and was not alone in fearing the unsealed homemade baked good. As a result, my own children have NEVER come home with a single apple in their trick-or-treat bags. The idea of giving unprocessed food for Halloween had been successfully erased from our culture. Almost.
I rounded up all the fruit we had in the house (apples, pears, bananas), put them in a nice basket, and decided to give it a try. Guess what?? The kids' faces lit up. Comments received:
"I loooooooove fruit. Thanks so much!"
"My mom will be thrilled you're giving us fruit--thank you."
"Apples are my favourite!"
Times have changed. When I was a kid (pre razor blade scare), we were routinely given fruit at Halloween, but we didn't think much of it. We preferred chocolate. The common apple was met with polite thanks and inner groans.
But to these kids, it made sense. I think they wondered why they didn't receive more of it. It was novel. And the beautiful "organically" grown fruit was green, red, and yellow eye candy. Each child happily picked a piece out of the basket. Even the teenagers.
I don't know if the parents (many who survived the seventies) will allow their kids to eat fruit given to them by strangers. So next year, I'll offer apples with our name and phone number taped to the stems.
Decades ago, the corporations scared us into buying their “safe” holiday crap with their control of the media. But this time, with melamine, they've gone too far. And when they go too far, more of us wake up to the filthy state of corruption in which they operate. We're not buying any of it anymore. On any level.
I'm convinced that all we need to know about the world can be found in the simplicity of the gift of an apple. If we can turn this into a pure act--every level of it--we can do anything. Please buy locally. Eat as locally and as unprocessed as you can. Start a garden. Plant an apple tree.
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