Variety makes the world go 'round

But, really, honestly, some people just make me roll my eyes. There is this article in the Globe today about people who are "urban foragers". They pick weeds and stuff from the side of the roads in the Boston area, that are edible as a way of consuming locally and making an environmental statement. What?

I'm usually the first to hop on the healthy food bandwagon. I love the idea of living somewhere I can have a garden of my own and have done a fair amount of reading of late about organic and local and all that and know full well that an organic kiwi from New Zealand is perhaps not covered in pesticides, but left a carbon footprint so large it doesn't matter that it is crystal clear on the outside. I do try to buy local, organic produce when I can, and organic other things if they are at the grocery store. (Though, this week I compared organic versus regular butter at Trader Joe's and opted for chemicals when the price was more than double for organic butter).

In the article the author talks about foraging for things under the BU bridge. Seriously. If you don't live around here this one of the many bridges that span the Charles River linking the Boston side and Cambridge Side. It falls smack in the middle of the BU campus and is bordered by Memorial Drive, Storrow Drive and Commonwealth Avenue. I can only imagine what the daily traffic flow in that area is and thusly how smog laden any weeds must be. Let alone the fowl that live in the area and poop everywhere, trash that gets pitched out of cars, salt and chemicals used to melt snow on the roads that runs off into 'weedy patches'. The thought of eating a blackberry found near there makes me want to hurl.

Are these people hoping they'll become the first examples of how we are poisoning our environments and, in turn, ourselves by eating what must be toxic food? Of course, I'm assuming that the things we buy at the grocery store are slightly cleaner and with a good rinse under the faucet, not totally deadly....I could be wrong.

Good luck to ya'll, I think I'll keep shopping at Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Stop and Shop, gathering my produce in the slightly more traditional fashion.