THE DISH WHAT A STICKER CAN TEACH YOU By Genevieve Vahl
A couple of years back, after having claimed the insurance money from the guy that t-boned me running a red light, totalling my car, I got a new car, well new to me: a 2008 Subaru Outback. I was most excited to finally put stickers on it like a glorified Nalgene from places I have gone, the Wisconsin ‘W’ to show some Badger spirit, a configuration of the great lakes as the proud Midwesterner I am. Brands too like Backcountry and REI to show my affection for the outdoors. It’s an indirect way to represent myself, but definitive of my values nonetheless, to the strangers I only catch at a glimpse passing me in the other lane. One time when I was driving westbound to Madison, I was honked at as a driver passed me in the left lane. I thought to myself, I am already going over the speed limit sir, please hold your horses. Until he passed in his red Buick Regal holding up two hands in a ‘W’ in Badger camaraderie. A bond we formed from a sticker driving 75 down the interstate. One sticker in particular I remember purchasing, feeling exceptionally excited for it represented a set of beliefs I held at my core; meaning I believed in deeply. Or so I thought... I found this sticker in one of the boutique stores on State Street. One of those sweet small businesses with the artisanal Wisconsin paraphernalia: the hand illustrated ‘Wisconsin favorites’ tea towels or the Midwest living t-shirts or the third coast stickers; each store with their own flare of tourist goodies. Even though I had lived in Madison for two years at that point, you become a tourist in your own city when your mom comes for a visit on a beautiful July afternoon. We stopped in all of the shops along State Street’s quaint mile long stretch that my college budget otherwise could not afford to even be tempted by. Because we all know those bright yellow cat eye sunglasses will always find a reason to weasel themselves into your ‘budget.’ In one store in particular, a multilevel stand held an assortment of bumper stickers with lefty sayings and witty retorts. Like ‘COEXIST’ in the various religious denominational symbols building out the letters of the word. Or ‘Eat Real Food’ in black sans serif font mounted on a plain white background. Yes! That’s it! That’s the one. As in proper Madisonian fashion, the eat local, eat whole foods rhetoric had influenced my personal relationship with food.
No longer was I naive to the ploy of processed, packaged foods that disguised deliciously addictive flavors from chemicals and preservatives. Eating ‘healthy’ is one of my most rigorous priorities. I buy from the perimeter of the store, the fresh foods, limiting myself to only trusted products from the interior packaged foods. I religiously made my meals in the anything but ideal kitchens of the freshman dorms; supported the campus Slow Food chapter. All while trying to minimize single use plastic as much as possible. So yes, ‘Eat Real Food’ rang so true to myself I thought it worthy enough to paste on my car. This same dedication to eating healthy also led me to pick up the book “In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto,” by Michael Pollan. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he opens the book in his introduction. Honestly that was exactly the type of concise, digestible piece of advice I was looking for out of this book. Yes, tell me what I should and should not be eating. Yes, I want to read a manifesto to better my own habits and tendencies in eating. Yet, when I got into the read, the direction was different than my expectation. He spends the entirety of the book talking about how the industrialized food system we have going on here in the US and the resulting western diet are literally the demise of health for the American people. He talks about how we need to make sure we refuse the processed, refined foods the groceries are marketing to us, to eat better, more sustainable food that is not mass produced and doesn’t have all of the added preservatives and chemicals.
“A bond we formed from a sticker driving down the interstate.”
Picture from www.foodiesfeed.com
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Summer Issue