BIO BS! - Now I can eat what I like, guilt free!

BIO this, BIO that. Moving from a described 'developing' country like Vietnam to a supposed 'developed' country such is Germany brings on a torrent of BIO assault that I was ill-prepared for. I saw it first in a three-week stint in Paris where we had a charming tiny flat just off St. Michel and we literally attacked every grocery from the local fromagerie to Carrefour because we had not seen food so plentiful and beautifully displayed in quite some time. "They only allow beautiful vegetables in Europe", sung my partner as we trolled the aisles of yet another testament to the power and glory of strict government controls (Nanny State), and the overwhelmingly bourgeois tendency to need to look just fantastically smart and erudite whilst engaged in even the most basic of daily chores - like choosing an avocado.

"Let's see, do I need the regular one or the BIO one?" The BIO one cost a Euro more and it's a little smaller. But oh the nutritional value and my financial ability to keep those bad corporate farm chemicals out of my system make it worth it, doesn't it?

Bollocks. Or so says Michael Spector in his new book, 'Denialism, How irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet and threatens our lives'. Spector is a respected New Yorker writer and takes on big pharma, big farm-a and a host of other big Washington lobbyists in stating his thesis that big corporate interest is screwing our planet and our people over somehow.

That said, reviewer Tom Philpot takes Spector to task for his premise and basically says that he points the pistol but doesn't even fire a shot at the interests he purports to be taking aim at.

"In the late 18th century, Edward Gibbon fretted about getting into trouble for his blunt take on the early Christians. Short summary: their intolerance and stupidity unwittingly helped bring down Rome. In the above-quoted passage of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', Gibbon tried to prepare the gentle reader for his coming exposé of early-church idiocy.

Like the great institutions of European Christianity, modern science has amassed tremendous power—and not always lived up to its founding creeds. Science needs a Gibbon— someone who appreciates its intellectual grandeur and potential, but who also can train a cold eye on the 'inevitable mixture of error and corruption' that has accompanied its tenure since the Enlightenment. That Gibbon is not Michael Specter."

Ahh, but that's all a little too high minded for us plebes here at the WWED isn't it? Yes, I thought so. So let me bring it down to two key points I got out of Spector in the middle of his rant that doesn't seem to have much of a target:

1) Spector points out quite rightly that organic food shows NO, I mean NO scientific benefits at all to the well healed who can afford it, although he does acquiesce that it tastes better and I would tend to agree, especially on the tomahtoes (oh, that British lilt I get in Europe. I love it!)

2) And number two: That multiple vitamins show NO, I mean NO, scientific efficacy in those who take them plus eat well and properly from the food pyramid in the first place.

Damn. Case closed! Gimme a cigarette. I can now rightfully piss off a partner and an ex´wife (whom was already pissed-off) again! Yee-Haa! I win. But not really. I can't count the times I've been statistically correct but still lost the war. Vietnam proved that against the Americans with the Chu Chi tunnels and the avoidance of more ordinance than had ever been dropped inside such a restricted perimeter and on so many people (who are basically still kicking ass today).

In Vietnam they would win no points whatsoever for appetizing display, unless of course you consider six live frogs strung together by palm strips and only available by the six-pack. appetizing, but never in a day in Vietnam did I feel that I was eating unhealthily or un-appetizingly. On the contrary. To eat at my street-side deer restaurant and have a deer sate and 6 plump deep fried prawns and a beer for four dollars now seems like heaven.

That other people deny themselves happiness when they feel I smoke too much, drink too much or eat the wrong things is really not my problem is it? I'm happy. I wish they could be happier with themselves - instead of living a life in pseudo-scientific denial.

C'est Si Bon : The Wild Wild East Goes West III

#25. That's us. The Taxi from Paris Est Station to St. Germain and the 6th arandissement is a whirlwind of postcard images and a far cry from the order of Frankfurt or the disorder of Ho Chi Minh City. To see the city in the flesh again for a second time makes one come to realize that whatever the French did add to Vietnam was but a drop in the bucket from the original. The aire urbaine that is the city of the Parisii envelopes one instantly from the river Seine to Notre Dame to our home for the next three weeks across from Jardin du Luxenbourg off Boulevard St. Michel. We are transformed, if only during the short ride, into urban sophisticates jetting the globe in search of business and pleasures unknown - untouched for just a moment by the realities that are our own independent lives - but even the city of lights can not take those realities away, rather it washes them in a waterfall of sights and sounds that say, "Wouldn't you like to be as fucking cool and sophisticated as we every day of the year instead of just for your time in this fucking cab?" My partner nods yes, without moving her head or saying a word at all.

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6 months worth of luggage hauled up four flights of ever winding and ever steepening stairs and we are at 444 - a tiny disheveled apartment, on the inner courtyard of an otherwise quietly impressive building, that seems to have been decorated by a French Helen Keller and furnished by Stevie Wonder. There is even an artist's garret across the courtyard with paintings and easels and the smell of fresh oil paint waifting through the divide. This is our bohemian rhapsody for the next three weeks. Our foxhole for planning and plotting our next move.

A trip to the late night gourmet convenience store (I've not seen a 7-11 yet) and three hours of kitchen cleaning the next morning yeilds a spectacular salmon salad with homemade croutin for evening and a breakfast of French toast with salmon side salad the next morning. Dinner Saturday is a braised duck a l'orange with merguez and anchovie dressing on the side - so at least with a budget that is more than modest, we are eating like Sun Kings. The Beatles would have approved.

In 1990 I had visited Paris on a trip not unlike this, combining business and pleasure with a course in French country cooking along with tours of the museums and countryside, so to be able to exercise my culinary skills again in the city of their refinement along with a stretch of networking and plan building seems almost a dream too good to be true. We all need to be able to hold on to days like these and make the most of them - they don't come along but every 20 years or so - at least in my case. And so today is the start of our research and contact building for the future. Is there a market in helping French based businesses with their management consulting and marketing affairs being activated in Vietnam? Well, we're certainly going to find out - and along the way discover just how much actual work it takes to make dreams come true and the proper amount of Infinite Wisdom to be used in holding the whole thing together. Vive la France!

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Post Script: In the writing of this post the following reader registered in on my Live Traffic Feed: Paris, Ile-de-France landed on http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com/ 14:36:14 -- 22 minutes ago - How did they know I was talking about them?

For more in the WWE Goes West Series check here:

I) The Wild Wild East Goes West: Onward Ho!
II) Frankfurt
III) C'est Si Bon
IV) Bon Jour Paris!
V) Les Picassos en Paris
VI) Nothing Much Happened en Paree Today
VII) Paris Wallpaper: Sometimes The Best Prayers Have No Words
VIII) Au Revoir Paris
IX) Is Publicis Groupe a Dead Brand?