Racist Fruitarian, I'll Admit it

I have to be completely honest. I'm so over tropical fruit. I feel like I always want what I can't have and can't have what I want. The grass is always greener, innit?  Today I experienced this "tragedy" while grocery shopping. While perusing the fruit kiosks, all sorts of exotic, spiky, sometimes scary, bright and fragrant fruits glare at me, yet none are so enticing that I would imagine taking them home with me. I'm a racist fruitarian, I'll admit it. I discriminate harshly when it comes to produce, and although I love every plant in its own way, when it come to fruit on my breakfast platter—Oh, what a sick luxury it is to even have these options— I don't want pineapple or dragonfruit or whatever the heck "Buddhas Hand" is, in my yogurt. I want raspberries and nectarines. And since I ethically refuse to buy out-of-season/ out-of-local-range fruit, I silently suffer. Yes, it sounds dramatic and pretentious but I really just like berries and cherries and stone fruits.

And I'll take that with granola. Oats, sunflower seeds, almonds. And whole milk yogurt. And freshly baked bread. And butter from normal, grass-loving, free-living cows. And yet where do I find myself? I find myself in an Asian-fusion culture that subsists predominantly on rice-based products, and soy sauce, and soy this, that and everything else. Why am I surrounded by thousands of gluten and lactose intolerant people? I hate rice and soy and corn. I like oats and whole milk. I feel like a fish out of water, and I can't even communicate it to the others around me. Sorry that I'm from Europe and my digestive system isn't built around Asian food.

Then there's the American element; pure bacon grease with a side of corn syrup. Order Up! Or should I say mortality rate UP! GMO everything, useless calories all based on corn. No, I'm not a native of the Americas. I can't digest corn or beans. I'm also not a robot, so I can't eat plastic for that matter.

I seriously think that there is some genetic science behind this. Regional genes that correlate with regional diets. Michael Pollan talks about this in In Defense of Food, which everyone should read. Well if his studies hold any truth, then pardon me. I'm from Bavaria where wheat, oats and dairy prevail. Where blueberries, raspberries, cherries, apples, plums and strawberries grow wild. And my French/ Italian genes give me the ability to stomach citrus, tomatoes, herbs, cheeses, lentils—Oh, how I love lentils—but nowhere in my genealogy is there a trace of asian descent (as far as I'm aware, perhaps some Eastern European roots, but that's too minute of a gene-pool to effect anything, I think) so I don't see how it could be that rice, soybeans, miso and so forth should ever appear on my diet. No wonder I feel like shit when I eat those foods. I'm just not supposed to.

The lines get a little fuzzy when teas, spices and coffees come into the picture. But those have been traded through Europe since 200 BC, and especially when Marco Polo traveled the Silk Road in 1271, so I think that the 20 or so generations of people living in Europe since then, have adapted to stomach cinnamon and the like.

I don't know. I get like this some days, where I clearly feel like a transplant that doesn't root well into new soils, but also forgets how to root into my original soil. Do I even have one of those? Maybe I'm a water lily, I need to be able to float around. It sucks... all I want today is some raspberries. But I'm still grateful for the apple-bananas, them and the sunshine. No complaints. Hawaii is beautiful, but I really am a fish out of water, no matter where in the world I go. Shit.

Homemade granola