Let’s say you’re drowning. Maybe your Italian cruise ship has capsized and you get flung overboard and find yourself very deep underwater. And by some combination of miracle and good cardio fitness, you make it up to the surface, where you immediately and instinctively do what?

Well duh, take an enormous breath of air, filling your screaming lungs and saving your brain from hypoxia and imminent death. That’s what we air-breathing animals do, we breath air. And so far, there’s no replacement for it, even scuba tanks run out eventually.

So why do we think that food, another one of our basic human survival needs, can be replaced with something else? Something made of chemicals, synthetic vitamins, taurine, caffeine, industrially-derived proteins, oils and corn-based sweeteners? Well that’s what the Foodiness industry uses to make what they like to call “meal replacement” products.

As if a meal could be replaced with a powder, shake or bar….silly Foodiness, food is for humans! Powders and shakes are for invalids, not that they’ll get any healthier eating that junk. And only babies who can’t do the boob should be drinking powdered foodiness out of a bottle. And using meal replacement products to gain or lose weight is just another form of an eating disorder. You may wind up gaining or losing weight, but you’ll lose your connection to food along with it, and may wind up like Karen Carpenter, or even worse, Nicole Ritchie.

I’m trying to find some gardenburger seeds…

But none of the seed catalogs seem to carry them…Any leads?

I have no beef with vegetarians, eat meat, don’t eat meat, it’s all good, as they say. (They say it, I try not to) We have choice here in the good old US of A. At least until next November, then all bets are off…But.

Give up meat if you want, give up dairy, wheat, carbs, meth, crack, gin, whores, closeted gay sex, whatever you want to give up, just DO it…But don’t then try to replace the given-up thing with a simulated version of it! If you are truly repulsed by meat, or ethically opposed or whatever it is, then eat f*ing mushrooms and beans and quinoa and spinach. You’ll feel great! That’s what I call a vegetarian real-food eater. But don’t go swapping out your meat with vegetarian Foodiness, fer’ chrissakes! Why would you eat vegetarian simulacra faux-meat products like tofu-dogs or soy cheese or chik’n nuggets, if you are philosophically opposed to eating animals? Huh? It’s like Tranny Chasers, closeted gay men who have sex with transvestites (pre-op), so they can still convince themselves that the person under that dress is  really a woman, and they’re not gay after all!

I know its a whacked analogy, but its kinda perfect, isn’t it?

Hate to break it to ya, bacon is bacon, it can only come from a pig. Yes, there are chefs making lamb bacon and veal bacon, all good and interesting, but let’s split us some  hairs here. Those cured, smoked slabs of otherness technically aren’t bacon. These dopplegangers come from the same anatomical parts as the pig part that gives us bacon…but they’re not bacon. The part in question is the belly, or side, of a pig. Salted, cured, dried and smoked.

Turkeys don’t have bellies, or sides to salt and cure. Calling turkey bacon “bacon” is like calling “coffee-whitening-powder” cream. It’s not just Foodiness, it’s Franken-Foodiness, made by evil men in lab coats, stitching together bits and pieces of one creature with another creature to create a monster.

Back when I went to Art College, we tossed around a lot of fancypants words like Simulacra, which is defined as an inferior impersonation or impression of something else. Like the Venetian Hotel in Vegas, vs. Venice, or Imitation Crabstix vs. Real Crab. Simulacra, it’s a good one to throw around at a party. (But be careful with simulacrum – it sounds a little dirty.) Turkey Bacon is Foodiness Simulacra. Designed to give you an approximate bacon experience, but with a “health-halo”, Orwellian double-think to make you buy and eat something you think is better, but is really much, much worse.

When it comes to Franken-foodiness, getting real is pretty easy, because all you have to do is not buy the Franken-foodiness products and instead by the real thing. So buy cheese, not soy cheese; or put milk or cream in your coffee, not creamer powder (which also sounds a little dirty). If you want blueberry pie eat blue berry pie, not blueberry pie flavored sugar free yogurt. And if you want bacon, just eat the damn bacon!