Wednesday, January 28, 2015

the cheeseburger

i have a weird fascination with cheeseburgers.  it actually all started quite a few long years ago when my friend amanda drew me a picture of a greasy cheeseburger covered in ketchup, mustard and pickles and i'm not sure if i remember correctly but i think it had some sort of graffiti-esque writing coming from the residue at the bottom of the page.  the colors are amazing.  the cheeseburger has these bright colors of orange with red and yellow mixed with earth tones of brown meat and sesame seed bun.  the curious thing about this fascination is that i'm actually a vegetarian, i haven't had a cheeseburger in probably fourteen years.

lately i've been thinking a lot about human beings and our progresses through civiliztion.  i've been caught recently on a thought of food and how important it is to understand what nourishes our bodies and where the things we consume come from.  this is when i started thinking about the cheeseburger.  at mcdonald's you can buy a double cheeseburger for ninety-nine cents.  if you look at that historically it is truly a testament of how far we've come.  you must consider the beef which is ground up and frozen then transported long distances to where it is processed in a kitchen.  the bread comes from wheat which is grown on different farms and the cheese comes from another area of the farm where milk is taken and turned into a solid over the process of pasturization, i actually don't know much about pasturization so i'll just assume that's the correct word for this.  cucumbers are turned into pickles by some sort of sorcery and other forms of magic create ketchup and mustard.  all of this comes together in a wrapper made from paper and given to us in a small cardboard box yet somehow this will cost the consumer less than one dollar.

this is amazing to think about.  historically we worked on our own lands which were cultivated to grow locally.  even further back we hunted and foraged for food and it could be estimated that it took about as many calories to acquire calories as it did to spend it.  then we have the cheeseburger, a sandwich of about four hundred to six hundred calories that takes essentially no effort to consume.  i guess i'm just struck by this fact in the thoughts that we should pay more attention to how far our species has come.

i don't eat meat though.  you'll ask me why and i'll tell you how i have no reason but i'm lying.  i have many reasons for not eating meat (or fish.. fish is a meat.. just saying).  i understand however that vegetarianism is a luxury or so i believe.  i don't squander the kindness of people who have taken me into their homes in the villages i pass through by rejecting their gifts of meat.  i've been in some really poor places and it would really be in bad taste to deny the kindness offered to me by those who don't have much to offer.  i still love the cheeseburger though, it's beautiful.  i would probably put a picture of a cheeseburger on my wall and look at it with fascination.  maybe it's a testament to our achievements as humans and it shows how far we've come or perhaps to me it's a reminder that we take our pasts for granted and often forget that things we're not always this accessible.

afiyet olsun


1 comment:

  1. My god. Your mind works so effortlessly and comes up with the most weridly beautiful thoughts.
    WOW.

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