Remember the world before kale? How to believe but there was once a time, very long ago, perhaps a decade or two ago, when no one had ever heard of this leafy green vegetable. Now it’s everywhere, and in everything, and it isn’t even any good. You kind of have to admire the genius marketing behind it.
How Kale Took Over the World
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
7 Comments. Leave new
I love it. Not kale, this illustrated laughing square.
Those of us familiar with the “food pyramid” that was subsidized by the milk and dairy industry are having flashbacks.
Well, it could be worse: At least “Big Kale” 😉 isn’t Big Tobacco, Big Agro, Big Coal, Conventional/Nuclear Military Industrial Congressional Complex, etc.
And you will notice a clear health benefit from switching from Red Meat to Greens (including Kale), not to mention a substantial carbon footprint reduction. A Kale smoothie actually tastes just like Pineapple (ok, I admit, that’s only because I just blended it with a Pineapple) with a bitter note and texture to it 😉
What I fully agree with is the marketing craze, and the one-size-fits-all and in-your-face-you-never-signed-on-to-this-but-we-don’t-care approach. It’s patronizing, intellectually barren, and far from consistent. E.g. if you check those same “health” products that “kontains kale” for marketing purposes, they are likely full of palm oil (even organic palm oil). It’s the cheapest on the market, since rainforest clearcutting and Indonesian labor costs are a bargain (for the company, the customer pays hipster price range, i.e. double). But since your body is your temple you are apparently not meant to care about the world outside that temple going up in flames (quite literally if you live in California where this type of thinking was unleashed). Oooouuummm. Namaste.
Supermarket foods are almost entirely different blends of the same very few basic stocks (grains and grain-derived high fructose crap, milk powder, meat and soy “products”) which you will find over and over again behind each product “range”. If Kale makes the cut, that’s really not exactly terrible, but factory-foods won’t magically become healthy, either. Unless they redefine health-food the way the redefined vegetables (to include Ketchup freshly harvested from a Ketchup-shrub).
I once bought a jar of “organic peanut butter” and found that the organic peanut oil was replaced with organic “rainforest clearcutting” environment destroying palm oil.
One can’t even buy peanut butter without reading the legalese inspired ingredient list.
What is the meaning of “is” as in this “is” peanut butter, anyway?
Bill Clinton, you have a lot to account for.
You found a way to stick it to Slick Willie! I did not see this coming.
More of that same old US exceptionalism, Ted ? Here in Sweden, the cultivation of grönkÃ¥l has been attested since the at least the 14th century and probably took place much earlier. I had a patch of this winter-hardy vegetable growing in my garden when I lived in SkÃ¥ne nearly four decades ago. But then of course, categories like «no one» and «every one» refer only to people in the only place that really matters, viz, the good old USA….
Henri
“But then of course, categories like «no one» and «every one» refer only to people in the only place that really matters, viz, the good old USA….”
Not only is Ted guilty of living in and writing (at times) about matters specifically related to life in the USA, he has the audacity to write only (to my extremely poorly researched knowledge, or perhaps mere assumption) in English.
I’m sure you complain (in the interest of fairness to Ted) just as often to the New York TImes about their lack of local Swedish news from a Swedish perspective, in the Swedish language.
Why don’t you try using Google Translate to get that Swedish homey feel that you find so lacking here?
To be fair to kale. It is high in fiber. And when you cook it down by steaming, just like with collard greens, it turns from a great big heap into a tiny little mess. Broccoli doesn’t do that.