That should be fine
An onion recall and a poetic reflection on the challenges of "just the facts, ma'am"
“It is not necessary to avoid eating onions
or other foods made with onions,” the CDC said,
after onions caused an E. Coli outbreak.
Not all onions, though,
Don’t smear all the onions by painting
With too broad a brush.
Just the onions at McDonald’s,
Well, at certain McDonald’s,
Just the fresh slivered onions on
the Quarter Pounders. If you had the diced
Onions, or if you bought a bag of sweet Vidalias at the grocery,
Or if you opened a can of soup with onions,
really,
That should be fine.
The onions — just the slivered ones—
Caused an E. Coli outbreak,
Which sounds bad, and it is.
But also you should know that some
Forms of E. Coli are harmless
And other forms are actually very helpful —
It’s all about the number of genes the E. coli have —
Well, that, and where they’re located.
E. coli that can live happily in the gut
Can wreak havoc in the kidneys.
So, sometimes necessary, sometimes deadly.
It is not necessary to avoid
all potential sources of E. Coli, even though
My gut (see what I did there?) says otherwise.
My great-grandmother use to say that onions
Are the “best blood-builder there is” and
That’s not exactly right
But we know what she meant, don’t we?
And onions can do lots of fantastic things for our bodies -
They might even reduce cancer,
Well, certain forms of cancer,
Well, it’s unclear if they cause that reduction in cancer,
But they correlate with it,
although experts really don’t know why,
But my great-grandmother had it right that
Onions are good,
Except, of course, when they are delivery vehicles
For E. coli -
the bad kind of E. coli, that is.
My husband laughs at me
Because I wear sunglasses as I dice
Onions (or sliver them, although I can’t really remember
The last time I slivered an onion).
I wear the sunglasses because onions make me cry
But it turns out that it’s not the onion’s fault -
it’s mine.
When I’m dicing an onion, I’m breaking open cells
and creating a really unstable acidic situation
And then I cry, not from heartbreak over the instability
My breaking of the cells caused, but to protect myself —
The tears are my brain’s defense mechanism.
They are rinsing away the instability. I wish it always worked like that.
Maybe it does.
Famously, onions have layers,
Perhaps you’ve heard,
Perhaps you’ve used an onion-peeling metaphor
One thousand too many times (guilty!).
The layers are actually leaves that build up to nourish the
Bulb. The outer layers, the onion paper, are leaves
That are all used up,
depleted of their nutrients,
But still giving the onion everything they’ve got,
Protecting the bulb, best they can, from pests and rot.
Albert Einstein famously said that “Common
Sense is actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices
Laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen.”
(Actually, maybe he said something like that, or maybe he just agreed with it
But Lincoln Barrett is the person who wrote it down).
As much as I would like to tell you that we should eat onions
With abandon (For blood-building! Or something!),
As much as I would like to tell you that
E. coli is definitively bad (#cancelecoli),
As much as I would like to blame the onion for my tears,
None of that is exactly right, for all the people, in all the forms, in all the places, at all the times.
No one likes confusing, conflicting facts
They really get in the way of our nourishment
They make us lose the bulb
But, with so many apologies to the tired onion metaphors,
Some of us have to continue to be the paper,
Protecting, dirtily, imperfectly, unglamorously,
From the pest and the rot, even after our patience
Has long dried out.
The one thing we want you to know this week…
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The one thing we can’t stop thinking about…
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How in the world did you make beauty of onions and E. Coli?!! 🤍
I did not expect this type of onion (poem) to make me tear up.
Dang, Beth. ❤️ That was lovely.