4 Comments
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julie elder's avatar

Ugh. People are so fucked up. I will never understand those like the saleswoman. They make me sick.

TAYLOR ALLEYN's avatar

I agree. It’s a crazy reality, and sadly it doesn’t appear it’ll ever change which is unfortunate.

Kathleen Gubbins's avatar

This essay is giving me a lot to think about. The word “enrichment” is really interesting. In many contexts, it would be assumed to mean that something is better than baseline, purely an addition. In the context of white bread, it’s what happens when good things are removed and only partially returned, leaving the result at less than baseline. This enrichment of white bread allows the people eating it to stay healthy enough so that work can be extracted from them, thereby enriching those doing the extracting.

TAYLOR ALLEYN's avatar

Enriched for whom. That’s the turn I didn’t make and you did.

The essay reads the word as a euphemism, a lie told about the loaf. You read it as a transaction. Enriched is transitive. Something enriches something, and the piece never asks what. Removed and only partially returned, and somebody upstream is made whole.

That’s the part I’ll be sitting with. It may not stay a comment.