Dough, the Humanity

You pizza lovers make me sick. Have you ever seen what dough goes through on its way to its final demise? Just imagine being wrapped in cling film, not being able to breath, knowing that your end is near, if not in human terms, but by pure instinct.

And imagine being a pepperoni, brutally sliced away from your brethren, inhumanly meeting your maker being broiled alive in an 800-degree oven. And all this while hearing the cries of olives, plucked pitilessly from the groves in which they spent their languid, sun-drenched childhoods to face a multi-bladed pitting-and-slicing machine, then to be entombed in their own bodily fluids until being slowly baked to death.

But the cheese — the cheese is what is clearly the victim of the most diabolically inhumane treatment here, just to satisfy the whims of a few pizza-lovers across the globe. Just imagine your tranquil beginnings next to your mother, who grazes happily in meadows of grass, only to be mercilessly snatched by suction into steel containers, then spun, wrung and sieved as you scream and cry for your parents, then to be carelessly tossed into vats where you will be slowly crushed. But you won’t die there.

You’ll be encased in shrinkwrapped plastic and shipped thousands of miles to a restaurant, where you will suffer your untimely end, quite possibly on the rusty blades of an indifferent box grater, to be added to the horrorshow awaiting a hideous roasting death on some uncaring person’s pizza.

But what makes the heart truly weep is for the tomatoes, those forgotten victims of countless vegicides, the ones who died so that others, including broccoli rabe, might live.

Crushed, puréed, sautéed, juiced, mixed, minced, seeded, roasted, diced, mashed, grilled, broiled and skinned alive, it is they for whom our hearts should weep.

All innocent victims for your careless love for an inhuman pie.