The Food Scout

It’s happening again. This whole “sustainable” thing is just Version 2.0 of the environmental trend of the early ‘90s that quickly moved away from solving the big issues and instead focused on whether plastic vs. paper grocery bags, or glass vs. plastic or aluminum bottles were the more enviro-friendly choices to save the planet. We’re still having to make a choice of bags at the grocery store (oh, but now there are also tote bags you can buy like the ones at Trader Joe’s that you bring with you every time so you can look superior to the slobs who have to store all those grocery bags), and the planet is still in trouble.

Well, the Environmentally Correct debates have begun in full force again. But this time there’s a new twist: It’s our health vs. the planet’s. Artificial sugar vs. high-fructose corn syrup vs. sugar. Butter vs. margarine. Bottled water vs. tap water. Seafood vs. meat. Natural corks vs. screw top lids. In each of these cases, camps are being drawn between what’s healthier for humans to consumer vs. what’s healthier for the planet. “Eat more seafood - but oh, we’re overfishing our waters to cut back.”

And the latest that got my goat was the news this week that natural corks in wine bottles are a more sustainable choice than screw top lids. A few years ago, we were exploiting trees and running out of cork and ruining whole bottles of wine with tainted corks. Naked PETA demonstrators were probably throwing itself onto cork trees in Spain to keep the trees from being stripped naked. But now that screw-top lids are FINALLY catching on, we learn from the Sustainazi’s that screw tops will wipe out communities where cork is harvested, and endanger acres and acres of land around the world.

Maybe people will just start drinking beer again, instead, like they used to.