The Food of Fools.

Bread, with its intensive, uncertain,
back-breaking cultivation, came a very long time ago,
when and where there were no bananas, broccoli,
asparagus, artichokes, cabbages, leeks, brussels sprouts,
courgettes, squashes, tomatoes, avocados, goji, oranges,
nectarines, apricots, plums, apples, cherries, pears...
rice or maize or quinoa, seaweed, seakale, spinach...
And yet people insist on eating bread, which now depends
on vast industries of seed-hybridisation (and patenting),
of machinery devoted to ploughing, planting, harrowing,
spraying, cutting, separating, winnowing, milling,
marketing, baking, marketing, transporting,
when they and the planet would be better off -
if we would only tell each other and our children to eat
all those fruits and vegetables which have been
developed since the start of the malign
and divisive dictatorship of wheat.
Bread is a complicated cultural artefact like language or religion
- and is just as toxic to the biosphere as the industry of meat.

Sic transit stultitia humana.

Leavened bread and alcohol both depend on yeast.
Bread and alcohol together constitute a feast.