The Columnist Manifesto

I had eggs for breakfast and, lacking a cereal box to read, I read the egg carton.

"A good source of PROTEIN"

That's one of the milder marketing boasts you'll ever see. Have people forgotten that eggs in fact are a source of protein? Hmmm.

"Our free range hens are fed a 100% organic vegetarian diet."

That's is more like it. Though I have to admit that I felt a bit... defensive, as I imagined more hard nosed acquaintances mocking me for "overpriced, politically correct" eating habits. As in:

Hahaha, your chickens are organic vegetarians! I bet they drive Priuses and handmake all their clothes from hemp!

In case that mocking thought is in your mind, however, I ask you what it says on your egg carton. If your egg carton was as matter-of-fact as mine, and if there were truth and justice in the world of advertizing, your egg carton would say something like this:

Our hens are fed a diet of 80% meat and meat-by-products. They eat intestines, beaks, combs and claws of other chickens! They eat chicken brains! It's all ground up into a brown sludge, and then we throw in some dried corn. And a few feathers. They love it! You like eating chicken don't you? So why shouldn't they? Oh, and some horse hooves too.

They sit in a cage all day unable to move, and if that doesn't make them fat and tender enough we pump them so full of estrogen that even you will get PMS, even if you're a guy! How cool is that?

Okay, maybe not so much, but it's cheaper than the other eggs.