Word: tomatoes
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They are canning tomatoes now, not the old familiar stewed tomato, but regular fresh tomatoes, cut up and sold as "Canned fresh tomato slices." The new product is advertised on television: happy families eating tomatoes in their salad, smiling as they munch the nutritious tomato slices...
...there is clearly no rational reason to can a tomato; in fact, tomatoes can be bought more cheaply fresh. We see in the canned tomato an example of the purely symbolic action: the benefits of canning a tomato are entirely psychic. And there must be a market for this symbolic action, for no manufacturer will produce a million articles that satisfy only his own neurotic needs. After all, this is America...
...canned tomato symbolizes the artificial split which man has created between "nature" and "culture." Man cooked meat, for example, because it stayed edible longer; the process had a rational benefit...
Canning the tomato is the triumph of the ego, the suppression of the natural, the inexorable advance of civilization. Technology has found a way to "cook" the tomato without shriveling it to an inedible rind. One simply puts the dangerous natural tomato into a can. Magically it is civilized, it is cooked. Now take it out of the can and it is "safe" to eat the tomato...
...scientists did not discuss anti-crop spraying, which accounts for 13% of the herbicides used in Viet Nam. Aerial spraying has destroyed crops of sweet potatoes, rice, sugar cane and vegetables used by enemy troops in South Viet Nam, and drifting defoliants have accidently destroyed rubber trees, sugar and tomato plants in friendly territory. But there is no indication that sub sequent crops on the same land are affected by the chemical dousing...