First, They Came for Sugary Sodas

...and I said nothing because I wasn't a drinker of sugary sodas.

Now, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York is coming for cauliflower, calling it "colonialist" in community gardens. Fox News' guest liberal, Cathy Arue, defended Cortez's statement, saying that cauliflower is a monocrop and the soil needs different plants to avoid becoming depleted, since the same old colonialist crops have been grown for generations.

From what I understand, people rent plots in community gardens and grow whatever they like. If committees are dictating what crops are to be grown in community gardens in New York City, where Ocasio Cortez is from, maybe the committees, not the cauliflower, are the problem.

In any case, is monocropping in community gardens a serious environmental problem? Looking at a few of New York City's 550 community gardens on Google Street View, I didn't see anything that looked remotely like this:

Photo by Gary Rogers. Wikimedia Commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

Arue also mentioned corn as a colonial monocrop, presumably forgetting it's the main ingredient in corn tortillas and that it's native to North America. 

The answer to this is simple, and it doesn't involve any conversations on colonialism. Divide the community gardens into plots, and let each person grow what they want to on their plot. Want to try to grow yucca in New York City? Want to grow a cauliflower monocrop? Go for it. Whether you want to grow beets and potatoes, collards and beans, tomatoes and peppers, or asparagus and arugula, that's your own business. This cauliflower kerfuffle isn't about colonialism--which ended more than 200 years ago in America--or monocropping--which doesn't exist in New York City--it's about telling other people what to do.

This goes for sugary sodas, too. If people want to drink them, that's their own business. Ah, but sugary sodas really are bad for you! They are, but salt, butter, eggs and red meat were thought to be bad, too. Public advice to shun those foods has led to a public health nightmare. Taxing sugary sodas, or otherwise making them hard to get, probably wouldn't harm public health, but it's a step in the wrong direction. Government involvement in diet was best when it helped ensure that people got adequate nutrients: iodine in salt, B vitamins in bread (when nutrients started being stripped from wheat), and a campaign promoting a diet of a variety of nutritious foods. As far as I know, they weren't trying to limit eating any kind of food--in fact, World War II posters discouraged food waste. When government started trying to limit intake of fat, salt and cholesterol, carbohydrate (and calorie) intake went up, as did obesity and diabetes. If there's a limit, tax or ban on sugary sodas, who's to say something worse wouldn't take their place? 

Maybe people wouldn't drink so much sugar if they didn't have blood sugar swings from the low-fat, high-carb diet that became mainstream advice for decades. Cauliflower has nutrients, and cauliflower gardeners probably aren't part of the country's diabesity epidemic. Ocasio-Cortez should stop complaining about people who grow cauliflower, or any other vegetable.