Learning and understanding

I just got back from my weekly grocery run.  I rather enjoy these shopping runs, partly because cooking is my domestic skill and partly for the samples and interactions that occur.  Today the samples included a cane-sugar-sweetened soda, some “healthy snacks” and some convenience foods. Let’s overlook actual science as we sample, shall we?  This may hurt!  So... the man promoting the soda informed me that since it was sweetened with “organic cane sugar” it was “healthier for you than water.”  Because organic.  The snacks included some bars that the woman promoting assured me were “complete nutritional support” despite being more than 40% sugar and containing 200% of the recommended daily allowance of salt, because they contained whole grains (and 1g of fibre per bar.  I think that they had 1 whole oat grain per package.) Among the convenience foods was a new, “smart alternative” chicken burger under the “heart healthy” label... containing twice the f...

When I was a student in high school, in the assembly Hall there was a balcony area.  When there was a full school assembly (other than for morning roll-call and prayers) the top class, the Sixth Form, had the exclusive right to sit there, out of sight of the teachers. All of the lower school longed for the day when they were in the Sixth and could sit there.  We wanted to do well enough in Fifth form exams to be able to return, and then to exercise our privilege for the balcony.  When my year was finishing the Fourth form, the rule changed under the new principal, allowing all classes above the Third access to the balcony. One of the nuns tried to explain that in fairness to everyone, they were removing this privilege— not everyone, she told us, made it to the Sixth, so it’s only fair that everyone have an opportunity.   We, and the Fifth, complained.  “It’s not fair!  We’ve waited all these years to get there!  If girls want to sit there, they sh...

“Do you know how to select a ripe avocado?” I was asked this in the supermarket last week, by a bemused-looking man staring at a pile of them.  I had gone to select one of the smooth-skinned avocados as a treat for myself, instead of the smaller, wrinkled ones that are so popular here.  We struck up a conversation as I showed him how to test for fullness and helped him choose one that would ripen by the next day.  Walking away, I remembered a story told by one of my friends of when her family had first arrived in Canada, and they’d gone shopping.  Their host family had praised broccoli, so my friend bought a head and carefully prepared it, stripping off the “leaves” and peeling the stem... and she wondered why everyone was excited about the pale green, slightly woody, not especially flavoured centre.   For myself, I remember when I was gifted my first zucchini — a monster that probably weighed 5kg — and I brought it home with no idea of what to do with this gian...