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If you wanted to buy fresh milk, where would you get it? Would
you buy it from a store, where it was factory-sealed in a carton and where you
could check the expiration date? Would you buy it on the side of a road, where
it was packaged in a repurposed plastic soda bottle and sitting out in the sun,
watched over by a little old lady and her dog?
Well, are you American or Ukrainian?
Let’s imagine you are American. If you’re American, your
understanding of stores is that they carry items that have been checked and inspected
and held to a high standard of quality control. Items in a store will not be
past their expiration date, will be properly stored to maintain freshness, and
will consistently meet a consumer’s expectations. If you’re American, you have
been trained to believe that milk sitting outside in the sun will have curdled
into something disgusting, unhealthy, and downright unsanitary, and that the
potential contamination due to its proximity to the dog and its extended
exposure to direct sunlight will render this sample both undrinkable and highly
hazardous. You, American, choose the milk in the store.
Now, let’s imagine that you’re Ukrainian. As a Ukrainian, you
believe that stores are not to be trusted. You know someone whose cousin once
got extremely ill from drinking milk that was bought in a store and marked with
an apparently incorrect expiration date, or maybe you just saw a story about a similar
situation on the news once. You also know of plenty of cases in which nasty
things like glass and garbage show up in frozen vareneky (pierogies) and other
store-bought foods and would never allow your friends to eat them. As a
Ukrainian, you personally know the lady who is sitting outside by the side of
the road selling the milk from the plastic soda bottle. She lives next door to
your cousin, Oleh, and she has a very fine cow. The milk is very good because
her cow is very good. Her dog’s name is Zhaba, like “frog”, because he does a
funny trick where he hops like a frog and makes all the children laugh. You,
Ukrainian, choose the milk in the soda bottle.
Cheers!
//
Ukrainians are against chemicals. I dislike making
over-generalizations, so I do my best to avoid them. That being said, all
Ukrainians are against chemicals.
Labels on all kinds of things read “БЕЗ ГМО”—without genetically modified organisms. Soda, water, cheese, toothpaste,
chips, carrots, maybe notebooks. I feel like these are all items I’ve seen with
labels identifying them as being free of genetically modified organisms. Great.
Would I see them floating in my water?
Don’t take medicine unless you absolutely have to. Take some
kind of homemade remedy. Mix something up yourself. Better yet, get your granny
to recommend something. Beer and honey, or was it beer and milk and honey? Eat
more garlic. And onions. And soup.
My favorite demonstration about the importance of avoiding
chemicals, however, involves apples. I guess it could be seen as a potential
cautionary tale for the Snow Whites of the world, those for whom wicked witches
are always scheming horrid deaths by irresistibly gorgeous produce.
“Never eat the beautiful apples,” Vika tells me one day,
very seriously.
I laugh, expecting a joke. I look over at Maria, who is
nearby, waiting for her to start laughing, too.
“It’s true,” she says, nodding. “My father says the same thing.
You can’t trust the pretty apples.”
I turn back to Vika, my best friend and most consistent source of knowledge in this whole country.
“Chemicals,” confirms Vika, confirmed.
Maria? Studying at the top university in the capital city?
Maria nods. “Chemicals.”
“You can only eat the ugly apples,” Vika tells me, handing me
an ugly apple.
It’s good to have friends who care, I think, looking down at
the ugly apple. I’m under no illusion that I’m a fairy tale princess, but if
any evil queen is out to get me, she’ll have to go through these two first.
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