They could have just called one of us...
...and we would have told them. But instead, a study was conducted that found that "Organic Foods Reduce Prosocial Behavior and Harshen Moral Judgments" or as it is put in the connecting link on MSNBC (hat tip goes to reader Diane for emailing this to me) "organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks."
"I stopped at a market to get a fruit platter for a movie night with friends but I couldn't find one so I asked the produce guy," says the 40-year-old arts administrator from Seattle. "And he was like, 'If you want fruit platters, go to Safeway. We're organic.' I finally bought a small cake and some strawberries and then at the check stand, the guy was like 'You didn't bring your own bag? I need to charge you if you didn't bring your own bag.' It was like a 'Portlandia skit.' They were so snotty and arrogant."
As it turns out, new research has determined that a judgmental attitude may just go hand in hand with exposure to organic foods. In fact, a new study published this week in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, has found that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.
I guess this makes it official. But to me it goes in the "no duh" category with established phenomena like divorce rates being higher among Hollywood stars and kids being more likely to drop out of high schools in the inner city.
"We found that the organic people judged much harder compared to the control or comfort food groups," says Eskine. "On a scale of 1 to 7, the organic people were like 5.5 while the controls were about a 5 and the comfort food people were like a 4.89."
When it came to helping out a needy stranger, the organic people also proved to be more selfish, volunteering only 13 minutes as compared to 19 minutes (for controls) and 24 minutes (for comfort food folks).
"There's something about being exposed to organic food that made them feel better about themselves," says Eskine. "And that made them kind of jerks a little bit, I guess."
A little bit? You guess?? Come on. These people will bring their own snacks to your party and put them front and center, and then they go around telling everyone to eat their stuff because its organic. No lie.
Oh, I loved the concluding quip:
"At my local grocery, I sometimes catch organic eyes gazing into my grocery cart and scowling," says Sue Frause, a 61-year-old freelance writer/photographer from Whidbey Island. "So I'll often toss in really bad foods just to get them even more riled up."
Woman after my own heart.
There's also been research that suggests that people achieve moral satisfaction from things like bringing their own bags and driving a Prius. Their morality thus fulfilled, they feel free to act like jerks in other ways.
ReplyDelete...they feel free to act like jerks in other ways."
ReplyDeleteEspecially toward those of us who aren't wholeheartedly enthusiastic about reduce/reuse/recycle-based morality.
Rush Limbaugh just covered this article on his radio show.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently raw-feeding my adopted stray pooch, and I've discovered similar rudeness and nastiness among members of the raw-feeding community. These zealots are dogmatic, rigid, intransigent ideologues who will rake you over the coals if you reveal that you (gasp) also feed table scraps (not to mention rice and veggies) or that you haven't totally moved on from chicken to red meat because red meat's too expensive, and no, you don't happen to know a hunter or a whole-cow supply company. And don't dare suggest to them that you find their prescriptions too complicated. I was told it is very easy to figure out a ratio of 80% meat, 10% organs, and 10% bones. Right. Because we all have special high-tech equipment that can correctly analyze bone-to-muscle-meat content. Whatever.
ReplyDeleteIt's enough to drive me back to kibble. Even though poochie is thriving on her el-cheapo chicken and turkey necks. Go figure.
dianonymous
And they will be ANGRY that your dog doesn't DIE because he ate a few pieces of rice. Just like they are mortified that more Americans aren't dropping like flies due to our allegedly horrible food supply.
Delete^ It's a lot like trying to explain to a crunchy con why you can't afford free-range chicken. No, you really can't, and you rally resent being rudely told that yes, you really can. :o
ReplyDeletedianonymous again
*really, not rally
ReplyDeleteThe best thing about this trend in uppity-ness is that they will chase away the casual organic buyer and marginalize themselves. At the point where their customer base resembles the fan base of the Cocteau Twins they'll have to ditch the attitude and lower their price. Or go out of business, which would be just as well.
ReplyDeleteDiane--yes, I totally agree that if there's anything I HATE it's being told I can afford something that someone wants me to buy. It's a hard-sell technique used by door-to-door salesmen.
ReplyDeleteAgain it's the same old problem: not being able to hear yourself, thinking you possess the "secret knowledge", ignoring the cognitive dissonance, whatever you want to call it.
http://diehipster.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/youre-just-simply-fucking-bbqing-more-marketing-to-the-hipster/
ReplyDeletePauli, what kind of organic food is this?
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have any food that looks like that, but I suppose I could root around and find something.
More important, when she finishes her moral licensing over there, is she gonna be doing that licensing over here?
the diehipster blogger calls hipsters "beardos". Hey! who does that make you think of?
ReplyDeleteKathleen, thanks that made my day.
DeleteYes, there is definitely a sort of beard obsession going on with hipsters like they are so radical to be able to generate them.
"My late sister was incredibly harsh in her judgment of people who ate organic food (e.g., moi), and I’ve seen that a lot too in conservative circles."
ReplyDeleteSo was that part of her "little way"? There is a lot in the Dreher post linked to by Guest. I'll let someone else unpack this vignette:
I made plans to share an apartment with a college friend. We were both moving to Washington, and each needed a roommate, so we planned to live together. Just before we moved in, he came out as gay. I didn’t care....
The girl with the sensuously upcurled, studded tongue seems to be the most coherent part of the post. From there things unravel with abandon.
ReplyDeleteCrunchy con foodies may be snobby, but, oh, yeah?, well my sister was snobby to me, too, and then a gay guy who I didn't say boo to although I say boo to other people was mean to me and a woman who was mean to a friend of mine it was because she was a lesbian and so it must be that there's nothing special about food snobs like me all people are snobby about everything it's a human thing...
...like I said it's a human thing...
...We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
oh man, I can't believe you ragged on the Cocteau Twins.
ReplyDeleteWell I used to listen to Twins regularly in the early nineties, but my point is that that they don't have a large following. That doesn't really matter though because they have a pretty unique sound. But when I take a rare trip to my local organic store I notice a lot of competing brands for any given product. My theory is that this sort of competition will ultimately force companies to refine their marketing to appeal to larger markets and the winner will be someone with a brand which is approved by the organic crowd but will also sell in the mainstream grocery stores. But I suppose this is overly optimistic because some people enjoy being holier-than-thou.
DeleteGuest, I am laughing out loud, seriously. I am laughing so hard that the onion in my belt is shaking.
ReplyDeletedianonymous