Vegetarian Propaganda

I sat and watched HR last night.  It's the public-run regional channel for Hessen.

The program of interest?  It was a piece on a family who did an experiment of sorts....with their three kids.  The topic?  Explaining the "real" way that food was delivered to your local grocery.  The family arrived at a local grocery, and this story unfolded as they walked around the store and viewed a video at each point.

They started with tomatoes....which was a sad story.  Most German-purchased tomatoes come from Spain and one particular region.  The water used for them?  Fairly contaminated.  The help?  Apparently there are a lot of African guys given low-wage jobs.  After five minutes, the clip on tomatoes ended, and the family had a brief discussion over buying the box of six tomatoes.  They decided not to buy it.

Onto carrots.  There were several points about the growth and delivery of carrots, but they couldn't really find nothing negative.  So they were acceptable to put into the cart.

Then came pork.  It was another sad story....mostly negative, on the way that pork got the shelf.  The family decided to not buy pork.

Then onto beef.  It was a terrible story about how cows create carbon, and it hinted of global warming.  The family decided to avoid beef.

At that point, I kinda had enough.  It was a propaganda piece of a mixed sort.  You basically scared up three kids (ranging from six to fifteen), and it's questionable if they ever eat pork or beef ever again.  In fact.....they might not even eat tomatoes ever again.

The show was designed as one of those food documentary pieces....but it ended up being a comical effort to make people anti-meat.  I'm guessing the folks who put this together....are mostly vegetarians and wanted the show to be seen as a 'lesson-learned' episode.

On the positive side.....few under the age of thirty watches HR.  It's like most of the regional channels....lacking in entertainment value, and is there mostly to serve the over-50 crowd.  Convincing a guy over the age of fifty to give up beef or pork?  It's physically impossible to talk a German guy into doing something that radical.

So it's all a wasted effort, if you ask me.  But you got to put something on HR that is long, dull and boring.....and not produced in the US.  This is the best that you can expect.