My opinion
There are legends but it may be time to see what they truly are. Until it is biologically proven that snakes [1] acquire something by being near to paper money or golden treasures, the only thing one can decipher is that owners and hoarders of money or gold want to scare off beggars and stealers by keeping the myth of poisonous and venomous snakes guarding their money or gold alive unless owners and hoarders erroneously believe themselves to be snake-charmers, immune to poison or venom of snakes which will allow only and only them to retrieve money or gold despite poisonous and venomous snakes guarding it. Similarly, until the after-life and paranormal phenomena are proven beyond all doubts, the ghost stories [2] invented to guard historic castles and haunted homes are meant to keep interested intruders at bay. Now the question arises whether the same can be true for so many essential foods getting blemished because of historical contexts attached to those foods thus preventing their consumption by all of us wherein we all continue to famish ourselves and our gut microbiomes despite the abundance of such foods for all in modern times [3-19].
Few options for all of us to overcome this relative famine for ourselves as well as for our gut microbiomes can be the following:
• Activism to make producers of these produce change common names into scientific names so that say banana becomes musa, coconut becomes cocos, chocolate becomes cacao and kefir reverses its name as rifek
• Activism against mass digital media advertisers presenting the produce in inappropriate light so that it becomes easier for all of us to continue eating and relishing say bananas and carrots [20-21] because truly blissful ignorance in this regard will be difficult-to-impossible in the globally connected humanity when expecting globalized populations world-over to not get affected by some local inappropriate media representations of the produce
• Activism to overcome hesitancy regarding the consumption of bowel gas-producing foods [22] while so unnaturally and exclusively living indoors with poor air changes per hour and poor sound proofing that even smells and sounds from inside the toilets are raising eyebrows and perpetuating embarrassments which are requiring additions of more unnatural chemicals and products produced industrially and sold unabashedly to counter our unnatural indoor living airspace's smells and sounds
• Buying the produce online for home deliveries before consuming the produce privately in protected privacy of homes so as to overcome the hesitancy to buy the produce in bricks and mortar stores or publicly consuming the produce openly in full public glare
However, rephrasing the famous words of Leonard Alfred Schneider (Lenny Bruce) to neutralize dirty minds preventing consumption of so-called "dirty" foods [23-24], the best scenario will be that all of us stare back at the public glare and freely and unabashedly consume the produce openly and publicly thus promoting its consumption in broad daylight and in full limelight because changing so-called "dirty" names may not change the dirty minds and the world will have to constantly invent new words to replace the old ones as similar to adiposity-based chronic disease (ABCD) replacing obesity (obese) replacing overweight (fat) [25-26].
The bottom-line for all of us is "eat these and beat disease" rather than "beating self if eating them" because to prevent havoc-wreaking from inside out, the beast within, our gut microbiomes, should not go hungry and get famished due to blemish on the food banished by dirty minds. Essentially, we all and our gut microbiomes should be able to unabashedly rejoice while openly confessing our love to relish musa, cocos, cacao, rifek and similar other foods.
Reference(s)
1. Why are snakes always associated with wealth and ancient treasures? http s://www.quora.com/Why-are-snakes-always-associated-with-wealth-and-ancient-treasures
2. A Warning to the Curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Warnin g_to_the_Curious
3. Perceived racial discrimination and eating habits: Systematic review and conceptual models https://www.medrxiv.org/co ntent/10.1101/2021.08.04.21261615v1.full
4. Effect of discrimination on food decisions https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/11805/PascoeRichman_ discrim_foodchoice_SI_2011.pdf
5. Gender Discrimination in Access and Consumption of Food Across Cultures https://www.rightsofequality.com/gender-discrimination-in-access-and-consumption-of-foo d-across-cultures/
6. Miscegenation, Assimilation, and Consumption: Racial Passing in George Schuyler's "Black No More" and Eric Liu's "The Accidental Asian" https://www.jstor.org/stable/20343496
7. Women Eat More Rice and Banana: The Influence of Gender and Migration on Staple Food Choice in East Africa https://www.tandfonline.com /doi/abs/10.1080/03670244.2020.1755278
8. Likelihood of purchasing bananas in the United States in 2021, by ethnicity https://www.statis ta.com/statistics/719118/likelihood-purchase-bananas-us/
9. Skinning the Banana Trade: Racial Erotics and Ethical Consumption https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315584423-2 3/skinning-banana-trade-racial-erotics-ethical-consumption
10. BANANAS: RACISM, SEX, AND CAPITALISM https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/06-object-politics/bananas-racism-sex-capitalism-franco ise-verges
11. The coconut’s dilemma — a foot in the black and white worlds, but acceptance in neither https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2019-04-1 6-the-coconuts-dilemma-a-foot-in-the-black-and-white-worlds-but-acceptance-in-neither/
12. The uneasy boundary work of ‘coconuts’ and ‘black diamonds’: middle-class labelling in post-apartheid South Africa https://www.tandfonline.co m/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2018.1516366
13. Coconut confusion reveals consumer conundrum https://www.sciencedaily.com/r eleases/2020/07/200706113948.htm
14. Resisting Dark Chocolate: A Journey Through Racial Identity and Deficit Thinking: A Case Study and Solutions https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1063220 .pdf
15. Waitrose apologises for selling 'racist' chocolate ducklings after criticism https://news.sky.com/story/waitrose-apologises-for-selling-racist-chocolate-duckli ngs-after-criticism-11688611
16. The Monkey Troop Facebook Group https://eatingevolved.com/pages/monkey-troop
17. Ask Addie: Similar in name, kefir, kaffir go well together https://www.statesman.com/story/entertainment/2012/09/24/ask-addie- similar-in-name-kefir-kaffir-go-well-together/10227051007/
18. Kaffir lime: Names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_lime#Nam es
19. The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health Kindle Edition https://www.ama zon.com/Good-Gut-Taking-Control-Long-term-ebook/dp/B00OZ0TOV2/
20. BRITISH DOCTORS DISCOVER CURE FOR THE 'CLINTON KINK' https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-fami lies/health-news/british-doctors-discover-cure-for-the-clinton-kink-9164662.html
21. RIDICULOUS Drug Ad Gives New Meaning To “Bent Carrot" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYgRaELspQk p>
22. 15 Foods That Make You Fart Incessantly https://www.menshealth. com/health/a19546650/foods-that-make-you-fart/
23. "There are no dirty words, only dirty minds." https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1203201
24. "It's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness." https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1250076
25. The ABCD of Obesity: An EASO Position Statement on a Diagnostic Term with Clinical and Scientific Implications https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30844811/
26. How Obesity Became a Disease https ://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/how-obesity-became-a-disease/388300/
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