aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, January 07, 2008

Retrovore

By now we all know Locavore. Today Eating Liberally has a disquisition on Vegangelicals and Retrovores.

“Vegangelical” I’d heard before. But where did “Retrovore” come from?

A Texan farmer by the name of Loncito coined this one, according to my fellow Kossack Jill Richardson (aka OrangeClouds115) who was chatting with Loncito and his son at an Austin farmers’ market. As Jill wrote in a dairy on Daily Kos yesterday, the son told his father "Dad, if you didn't raise animals the way you do, I'd probably be a vegan."

Loncito agreed that he probably would be, too. And that, Jill wrote, is when “they came up with the term "retrovore"-"one who eats food that was raised the way it should have been raised… like they used to do it before they learned how to ruin it.”

This word dovetails nicely with Michael Pollan’s edict "Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." According to NPR’s Liane Hanson, “2008 will be the year of ethical eating; vegetarian and locally produced food will grace more tables; wines will be more than organic, they’ll be biodynamic; there will be servings of micro-greens you grow yourself…” In other words, more of us will be breaking free from the conventional food chain and getting back to the garden. I guess it’s too early to nominate “retrovore” for 2008’s Word of the Year, but I thought I’d give it a running start. Better not look to the vegangelicals to help me spread the grass-fed gospel, though.

Retrovore would get my vote. I’m about to buy my second cow (pictured above). This one I’ve known since it was a young calf; the first one is chronicled here.