THE OBSERVATION BOOTH
OP / ED BY ANDREA DIALECT
PHOTO CREDITS ANDREA DIALECT, GEN AI
Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday and/or Nina Simone)
(Google that and listen as you read below. Let
me know what you think!) … Andrea Dialect
STRANGE FRUIT
OH, SNAP. Now let’s slide this in, SNAP and EBT. Cuts, delays, changes, panicking and confusion. Every time things shift, my first thought is, what should I be looking at now. Because when things shift, it is a warning, a heads-up, a nudge saying pay attention.
Maybe this one is pushing us to look again at what we’re eating and what we are buying, and what we’ve been trained to pick up without question. If they can control what’s on the shelves, what’s in your cart and why you’re swiping for it, they sure can control what goes into your body.
This week’s article draft literally fell into my lap. A friend and I stumbled into that ugly topic during our conversation, but he hadn’t been talking about my kind of ugly when he mentioned fruits and produce being my preference. I wrote about this before – the ugly, the similarities of those stockpiles in grocery stores, each one the likeness of its own kind, the absence of aroma and the lack of flavor. He was talking about Ugly Fruit, also known as Ugli Fruit, and I hadn’t ever heard of such a thing before. It made me ask myself: what’s really in the bag?
I miss those store runs when scavenging through once beautiful stacks and piles of veggies and fruits, examining lovely imperfections, bruises, signs of over-ripening, and even those that refused to ripen at all. That used to be my treasure trove. Bumps, scars, freckles – bent, bumpy, speckled, twisted – that is what I like. Give me ugly anytime, because the polished lookery presented for ingestion has no appeal. It curbs my buying power as well as my appetite.
In my opinion, when it comes to produce – as with so many other things one could ingest – logically, it ain’t Mama made. I can see that. Now, pretty is not so pretty anymore. Be it strange fruits or veggies, when they’re bent, bumpy, speckled, or twisted, we call it “ugly.” But ugly isn’t bad; sometimes it’s just different. And sometimes what makes it different goes much deeper than the skin.
This article is about that difference. It’s about the fruit and foods we eat every day that didn’t start off looking, tasting, or growing the way they do now. Some were mixed together by people. Some were edited, engineered, or altered – not by Mother Nature, but by man-made science. And the truth is, most of the foods we eat today didn’t exist hundreds of years ago. We have entered the world of GMO and hybrid foods.
A GMO is a food that has been changed in a laboratory. Scientists reach inside the plant, switch things around, add something, remove something, and suddenly the plant becomes something new. Think of it like editing a character in a video game – new powers, new colors, new features – except this time it is real food going into real bodies.
A hybrid is what happens when you mix two different plants together – A plus B equals C. It’s like mixing a lion and a tiger to make a liger, but for food. Hybrids usually come from farmers, not labs. They choose plants they like and cross-pollinate them to create a new type of plant. It sounds cute, but here’s the catch: some hybrids can’t grow on their own without human help, and many don’t have seeds that produce real fruit again. Meaning – when they add in, what exactly did they take out? I say taste. I say nutrition. I say value.
Visit Localtalkweekly.com to read drafts in its entirety and check out the archives getting even more amazing content from the Entertainment section. While you’re at it, check out my fine artistry photography archives in support of my subjects that, while Lending Their Image To Change, become my muse and clay as supporting my experimental projects as I mold them into Fine Artistry Also join me and the collective for my Facebook live as I develop daily “PORTAL” sessions. Follow my msdialect Instagram, and let’s grow out loud together! Like, follow, and share.
DID YOU KNOW….
FOODS THAT AREN’T WHAT YOU THINK THEY ARE
Here are some everyday foods that didn’t start out the way we know them:
1. Seedless Watermelon
Real watermelons used to have big black seeds.
Today, most are hybrids – made seedless for convenience.
Pretty? Yes.
Natural? Not exactly.
2. Bananas
Those perfect yellow bananas?
They’re man-made hybrids.
- The original wild bananas were full of hard seeds.
4. Seedless Grapes
Kids love them because they’re easy.
But they’re created through breeding and lab assistance.
Nature didn’t make seedless fruit – people did.
5. Corn (Almost All of It)
Corn is one of the most engineered foods in America.
It started out as a tiny, tough plant called teosinte.
Now it’s sweet, large, bright, and everywhere – from cereal to snacks to sodas.
6. Carrots
They used to be purple or white.
Humans bred them until they became orange – on purpose.
7. Strawberries
Modern strawberries are hybrids from two different plants mixed together.
Bigger, brighter, sweeter – but far from the original.
