A chicken

“Eggs come from sheep, crisps are made of plastic and butterflies produce cheese” — so begins this article on a survey of where British kids think their food comes from.

Quoting the article again, some kids believed: “beef burgers came from McDonalds or Burger King, that yoghurts were made using turkeys or ducks, ham came from the Co-Op, bacon from horses, goats or peacocks and cheese originated from butterflies, rats or mice.”

Apparently crisps come from rabbits, plastic or sheep rather than potatoes, and ice cream comes from cheese, air, fish or potatoes.

The kids surveyed were aged between six and eight which may make the whole survery utterly pointless. Nor do the authors of the survey seem to take into account the possibility that fun-loving British kids faced with a po-faced and apparently inane questionnaire might be inclined to mercilessly take the piss (Where does cheese come from? Duh! Moon mines, of course! Tee hee hee.).

But the last laugh is definitely on the people that conducted the survey, because the bizarre responses the kids gave are all possible correct answers.

In this age of chemically enhanced, processed, synthesised, factory farmed, steroid-packed, genetically modified, artificial, irradiated foodstuff, in which vat-grown animal protein is a real technology, where flavour and colour additives come from crude oil, where fresh food is converted into a simulacrum of itself, who is to say that eggs don’t come from sheep or cheese from butterflies or cream from cats or bananas from mynah birds or sugar from fairies or soy protein from the bodies of dead people?