Sustainable. Locavore. Source. Free-range. Grass fed. You know what pisses me off? All of this hipster, New Age bullshit nonsense that is trying to change the English language as we know it. Taking nouns and making them verbs and vice versa. Creating entirely new words. Forcing words on a gullible, naive and often too-stupid public trying to create a new, more dynamic meaning for a word that has been around for centuries.

People won't buy a piece of salmon in a store unless it's "sustainable." How could it not be sustainable? As long as there is one male and one female salmon in the ocean, salmon is sustainable. It might not be sustainable on the level we need for mass consumption, but it is sustainable. And there are fish farms too, so if we consume things in a responsible manner, we'll have them for a long time. The same goes for any plant or animal. When a lumber company cuts down a full-grown tree it plants two new ones. It only makes sense. Two hundred years ago, shortsighted loggers and businessmen did considerable damage, but over the last hundred years or so, we've learned. I can't imagine anyone killing off the last two of their farm animals or any livestock that they sell for income. Once they're gone, they're gone. Hence, you don't sell off your livestock until you have replacements. Therefore, they are sustainable. The only thing that might be considered non-sustainable is coal, oil and natural gas. But technically they are. It just takes millions and millions of years to create more.

Locavore...please. This is a stupid, fabricated word that means one doesn't consume food that was "sourced" from more than a few hundred miles away. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a locavore. All of the grocery stores I go to are within ten minutes of my house, therefore "local."

Free-range and grass fed are feel-good terms made to convince the naive, altruistic consumer that livestock live an easy life and don't "suffer" so that we can eat them. If they're not free-range, they're in a barn. But whatever the case, their entire lives consist of eating, sleeping, shitting, peeing and repeating. I could live like that. Grass fed? I grew up on a farm and my dad had about twenty beef cattle. Each year we butchered two of them. We didn't know how good we had it. Locally sourced, grass-fed sustainable beef!!!! Do you know what it tasted like? Beef. The rock star Ted Nugent once said that if a food is in a grocery store and wrapped in anything, it's not free range. Someone had to catch it to kill it. It's very true, and it shed lots of light on the stupidity of this whole way of talking.

I think two of the worst offenders are "source" and "rehome." Of course, sourcing means nothing more than getting your products. You no longer shop for food...you source your groceries - hopefully from the local farmer's market peddling other sustainable locavore foods. And rehome? Like locavore, that's not even a word. If one rehomes something, they bring it from one place to another to live. "I rehomed that stray dog." 

Why can't we talk like we used to? It was sustainable for so long. And I can't get away from it. I'm far too old to rehome.