Repentance of a Food Skeptic

I urge you to watch the video above. It’s 18:27 long, but it is really over at about 18 minutes. When I was in college about 20 years ago, I began to hear about “organic food.” As a chemist, the term, then and now both, bugs me for dozens of reasons. My initial reaction beyond that was intense skepticism of something promoted by wild-eyed hippie types who were just being disestablishmentarian. That view has only slowly eroded over 20 years, but it is largely (not completely, though) washed away.

This erosion has been due to more and more folks learning more and more about how the food industry works and the unintended consequences of otherwise logical decisions, based on good, but incompletely tested scientific research. It has also been based on personal experience.

Alone

One stereotype of college faculty is that of a solitary introvert, socially awkward, and so on. While for many, research is collaborative, we do tend to spend an awful lot of our time at work by ourselves, and even when in a group setting, it is often lecturing before a class or leading a group meeting—in short, a time where we are still set apart from the majority of people in the room. Whether we like it this way or not, there are some dangers of which we should be aware and actively circumvent.