"What did food used to taste like?" asked the boy.
The old man looked out the window a long time.
"Like something good," he said.
"Why did they change it?" asked the boy.
"The soil got tired," said the old man. "And we got impatient."
"So what did they do?"
"They learned to make fertilizer out of oil to force things to grow," he said.
"Is that bad?"
"They thought it was magic," said the old man.
"Did it work?" asked the boy.
"Better than anyone dreamed," said the old man.
"Then why do you look sad?"
"Because we forgot that the soil was trying to tell us something."
"What was it trying to say?" asked the boy.
"Slow down," said the old man. "Rest me. Rotate the crops. Let things die so new things can grow."
"Did anyone listen?"
"No," he said. "There was money to be made." "Then the bugs came," said the old man, without being asked.
"How did they stop them?" asked the boy.
"They poisoned the fields."
"Did it work?"
"For a while," said the old man. "It always works for a while."
"Grandma says food used to taste better," said the boy.
"It did," said the old man. "I remember."
"What do you remember?"
"Tomatoes that tasted... alive," he said. "Bread that went stale by Tuesday."
"What happened to that bread?"
"They figured out how to make it last forever," said the old man. "And something was lost."
"What's corn syrup?" asked the boy.
The old man was quiet for a moment.
"It's what they put in everything when they ran out of ideas," he said.
"Is it food?"
"They called it food," said the old man.
"My mom buys low-fat everything," said the boy.
"I know," said the old man.
"Is that good?"
"They took out the fat," he said. "And filled the hole with sugar."
"Why?"
"Because sugar is cheap," said the old man. "And it makes you want more."
"Is that when people started getting sick?" asked the boy.
"Getting big," said the old man. "Getting tired. Getting sick. Yes."
"All at once?"
"It took a while," he said. "Like a slow flood you don't notice until you're underwater."
"Why didn't the grownups fix it?" asked the boy.
The old man smiled. Not a happy smile.
"They made new labels," he said. "Organic. Gluten free. All natural."
"Was it fixed?" "
The labels changed," said the old man. "The food didn't."
"And they have shots now," said the boy. "That make you not hungry?"
"Yes," said the old man. "They call them GLP-1 drugs."
"Do they work?"
"They work the way a blindfold works," said the old man. "You stop seeing the problem. The problem doesn't stop."
"So what's the problem?"
"Your body is asking for something," he said. "The shot tells it to stop asking. What I'm talking about gives it an answer."
"Is that good?"
The old man thought for a long time.
"We spent a hundred years filling the world with food that doesn't feed us," he said. "And now we take drugs to stop wanting the food that does."
"That doesn't make sense," said the boy.
"No," said the old man. "It doesn't. No sense at all."
The boy was quiet. "So what do we do?" he asked.
"We remember," said the old man. "And we start again."
The boy picked up a bottle from the table.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Something closer to the beginning," said the old man.
"What do you mean?"
"All the essential nutrients are in that bottle," he said. "Things the earth made. Things your body already knows."
"Did people used to get these from food?" asked the boy.
"Yes," said the old man. "Before we broke the food."
"So this is like... remembering?"
The old man nodded slowly.
"That's exactly what it is," he said. We're starting to remember."