In which I downgrade my diet.

Some time ago I stopped eating at Burger King -- not for the obvious reason (I have much better food options) but for altruistic reasons. Burger King was hosing the tomato pickers for over what was chump-change for BK, but an important organized labor success for the tomato pickers of Florida. It was the "penny a pound" deal that the Coalition of Immokalee Workers struck with the big tomato-growers consortium in Florida. Most of the big tomato buyers like McDonald's were on board with it -- but BK sabotaged the deal. So I stopped eating at BK, even though there's one a block from my office and sometimes a nice cheap BK Broiler was just the thing when I was hungry and suffering from a cash-flow problem. OK, the food wasn't great, but that's not the point of fast food -- the point is that the food is cheap, and the exact same, every time, so you know precisely what you're going to get no matter where you are.

Anyhow it's tomato season in Maryland now, and I am going to buy a bushel and teach my city-slicker wife how to can them. I had to go into the office and work today but we went to the Farmer's Market first to arrange for delivery of a bushel of tomatoes next week. (And to buy a week's worth of fresh produce... I love the Farmer's Market.) Once I got into the office, I checked out the CIW website and discovered two things:

(a) Burger King caved, but
(b) Chipotle is the new target of CIW tomato-picking wrath.

The thing is, I like Chipotle a lot more than BK. I could go the rest of my life without eating at another Burger King, but sometimes you are stuck somewhere in the suburbs where it's nothing but chain restaurants, and a big fat 1,000 calories Chipotle chicken-and-black-bean burrito is hands-down your best choice. And while you know the food is not particularly good for you (at least they are up front about that), the Chipotleans spout a very convincing line about "food with integrity." Eating at Chipotle allowed you to suck down fast food and feel self-righteous at the same time. Even though McDonald's used to own them.

But Chipotle won't abide by the fair labor practices rules that the CIW is trying to establish. (In a nutshell, the CIW negotiates a deal with the buyer, who agrees to pay an extra penny a pound, which the grower agrees to pass on directly to the pickers.) Plus, on the CIW website there's a picture of a cute girl waving a protest sign ("There's no integrity in slave wages!") outside the Chipotle headquarters in Denver. I went to the Chipotle site to see their side of the story but... they don't have one. Actually, what they did was pretty shitty: they said "What? Poor labor conditions for tomato pickers in Florida? Oh, we can't have that. We won't buy any more tomatoes from Florida." And moved their contracts elsewhere, where there is no CIW negotiating higher rates or better conditions. (Apparently bigger companies can't do this as easily, because they need a lot more tomatoes).

(Aside: slave wages? Really? I though, by definition, slaves didn't get wages.)

Oh, and in researching all this, I came across an article on the subject in The Nation. Let me just say here that I want to track down some of the people who left comments on the Nation article, and kick them in the face. I thought I was a self-righteous douchebag, but some of these people really take the cake. Lots of people saying things like "of course I've never eaten there, because it is a national chain and therefor by definition the embodiment of evil, but shame on them!" They're like the people who sniffly assert that they don't even own a television and they are, therefore, far, far superior to the millions of people who do, and at any rate, all television sucks, so therefore, they don't own one.

Here's something that really made me want to launch a smackdown: "well, after checking the menu, it seems to be "mexican" food only a gringo could love. do yourselves a favour and visit a local mamá y papá restaurante and have some real food!" Fuck you, you fucking self-righteous prick. First off, the fact that a restaurant is owned by someone with brown skin and accented English does not make its food automatically better. I have eaten in some really vile Mexican restaurants owned by actual Mexicans. Second, there are vast swaths of this country where there is no "mamá y papá restaurante," and third, your use of the Spanish just makes me want to punch your fucking smug teeth down your fucking smug throat that much more. Fourth, it's not Mexican food, it's tex-mex, and fifth, don't call me a gringo, and I won't call you a fatuous queef. Sixth, don't fucking tell me where to eat.

Despite the fact that I don't want to be like the unctuous little self-parodying leftist assholes on the Nation's comments section, I probably wll stop eating at Chipotle for awhile. Because the CIW has a cute girl with a sign, and Chipotle Inc. just has hypocrisy. Luckily, I don't go to the suburbs that often anymore. And there's usually a Qdoba or Baja Fresh around if I'm really jonesing for fast-food tex-mex. (I know, they're probably not any more ethical than Chipotle -- maybe even less so -- but I'm trying not to look too closely, here.)