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is set up to fall if disturbed-take from the top. You say
you can't reach the top? Too bad.
Here's the fruit and vegetable section. Piles and piles of
perfect, unbraised and unmarked, insect-free orbs of
color. Try buying one of each and eating them blindfold
ed. You probably won't be able to tell the difference be
tween an apple or a pear because all the flavor has been
bred out. But it's szfe, it's perfect, no worms.
How about some meat? Hundreds of prepackaged
steaks, chops and roasts are displayed for you, cut from
the finest hormone-injected and speed raised meat
animals. When you get it home, you find the side hidden
by styrofoam is the one with all the fat, gristle and bone.
The prices we pay for progress. . .
Now it's time to hit the main body of the store for
canned, bottled and frozen goods. Hers we get into one of
the most complex marketing schemes devised. Surface
packaging of the products costs consumers billions each
year in higher prices. The wonderful pictures of tasty pre
pared foods shown on labels is now what your meal will
look like, but that's progress.
Your tastes have been manipulated by advertising since
your childhood, so without thinking you pick up lots of
"snack" products with near-zero nutritional value. The
food is flavored with superchemicals that zap your taste
buds, because the natural flavor has been processed out.
You buy products like Pepsi or Coke because you have
been conditioned to like them.
Even the so-called 'staples" are not exempt from
commercial ruination. "Enriched white flouf has to be
enriched because almost all the nutrients have been
removed by processing. "Polished rice" has had its .
nutrients polished right off.
It is really amazing how marry competing products are
in your neighborhood grocery market. It's also amazing
that this competition is between packaging and promo
tion, since there is actually very little difference between
the products themselves.
Checking out is a really fun experience. The checkers,
poor slaves to a machine, are instructed to smile and say
hello. Your selections are whipped through and put into a
bag with incredible speed, and you pay your money. Sped
on your way with another plastic smile and a "Thank
you-have a nice day" and a few tickets to an absurd game
or contest, you exit.
When you get home with the victuals, you may not
have enough nutrients to meet your needs, since you have
to be quite knowledgable to pick the good food from the
garbage offered by the modern American food industry.
But-that's progress, that's progress, that's progress,
that s pro.
For its exotic products (when have you last seen a
Mtmg bean field in Nebraska?), Open Harvest relies on
"DJooming Prairie " a warehouse cooperative in Iowa
City. The coop carries grain products, cheeses, vegetables,
teas and spices.
It sens mixed teas and herbal teas, which are
considered an inexpensive source of Vitamin C. It sells
edible beans and beans to be sprouted, such a? alfalfa.
In the center of the store large bins hug masses of
grains, barley and wheat including bulgur, a parbroiled
cracked wheat flour. The co-op mills its own flour in a
small mill in the basement. Largs cans in the store contain
molasses and honey.
Dried fruits and vegetables are also sold, as are bread,
granola and peanut butter. Cheeses and fresh eggs are sold
as sources of animal protein.
Vasina said that more dairy products and possibly
even meats would be added, "if space and health regula
tions were less prohibitive."
Open Harvest considers everyone in the community a
member of the co-op, but the store is kept open by its
working members. A working member contributes a mini
mum of three hours each month, pricing, selling and
packaging the produce.
Everything in the store has two prices; one is a 20 per
cent markup of wholesale prices for working members;
the other is a 50 per cent markup for the public.
The final SO per cent markup is high in comparison
to a supermarket, Vasina said, but the actual retail price
is lower at the co-op hecause "there are few, if any,
middlemen making profits off the products," he said.
Labor a problem
Voluntary labor is "a problem every co-op has to deal
with," Vasina said. "Some have to rely on a haphazard
show-up-when-you-can system. We try to have rimes
when members can sign up to come in and work."
Vasina said he hopes someday his job as a paid manager
($2.30 an hour) wSl be replaced by unpaid volunteers.
An educational committee of the co-op attempts to in
form Lincolnites about alternative forms of eating.
Currently the committee is studying a "food vend"
measure to present to the Lincoln School Board. This
measure would require vendors to place nutritious foods
in at least half the vending machines in the public schools.
"We now have around 200 members," Vasina said. "At
first our members came from the anti-war movement and
were concerned with economic alternatives. Now our
members are more diverse: they come for the food. The
most important thing is our cooperative method of dis-
...r nr. I e
responsibility." -
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