Kale, ketchup and cancel culture
Trigger warnings from your salad
Dear reader, it disturbs me to write this but my last post was triggering to many in Substack’s culinary community.
I received a fair bit of hate mail including the following notes:
Subject: Harmful Bio-Essentialism in the Produce Aisle
As a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Alimentary Studies, I am literally shaking. The author’s insistence on ‘biological reality’ regarding the tomato is a violent erasure of the tomato’s lived experience as a salad-adjacent entity. To suggest that a tomato’s placement next to kale is ‘masquerading’ is a dog-whistle for botanical gatekeeping. We must move past these colonialist taxonomies and embrace a fluid, flavor-based spectrum of identity. Your ‘ketchup’ threat has been reported to the Nightshade Safety Council.
Holding space for your accountability, Radish Al-Root (he / they / yam)
But Mr. Root wasn’t the only person who had complaints.
Subject: Do Better.
I’m disappointed. As someone who has spent the last six months protesting the systemic oppression of root vegetables, seeing ‘veggiephobia’ treated as a joke is a slap in the face. Do you have any idea the trauma a non-binary zucchini goes through when it’s mislabeled as a squash? I’ve spent $4,000 on ‘Seedling Sensitivity’ workshops, and it’s clear you haven’t done the work. Educate yourself. Silence is violence, especially when it comes to legumes.
With trauma informed tenderness, Bexly Bitter-Melon (ve / ver / vine-ripened)
Bexly did the work. Now it’s up to us.
Subject: From the Compost Bin to the Sea!
The author’s ‘ketchup’ comment is a clear incitement to purée-based genocide. This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that leads to the systemic mashing of innocent produce. We are organized, we are organic, and we will not be silenced by Big Fruit. We will be picketing your kitchen until every cherry tomato is given the dignity of being recognized as a beefsteak if it so chooses. The revolution will not be refrigerated!
In struggle and compost, Moonbeam McCracken-Corn (per / pers / pesticide-free)
So to all my salad-adjacent siblings, I say this:
May your produce be seen, your legumes be heard, and your zucchinis be labeled with care.
The revolution will not be refrigerated—
But it may be lightly sautéed.
