That’s Gross

I’ve gotten into many discussions about the “grossness” of eating discarded food. My normal response is to argue that doing this is not, in fact, gross – but maybe that’s missing the point. Once people are clear on what exactly it is I do or eat, then my haggling about its grossness seems to be just about semantics: an appeal for them to apply a different label to the action which we both have a perfectly clear picture of. In that case, the haggling would be missing the point. I should instead immediately challenge the underlying perspective; I should instead reply, “Well, it may seem gross, but there are much more important considerations than grossness.”