Editor’s note: This letter is in response to the Daily Lobo’s coverage of the Tomato Assault event in the Daily Lobo for the week of May 28-June 2, in which event attendees donated money to the National Sclerosis Society and took part in a tomato food fight as the event’s main attraction.
Editor,
Your report of the food fight with tens of thousands of tomatoes exemplifies this country’s brazen waste of mounds of precious food in events like this and other similar events such as food-eating contests that occur all over. And all this while there are children starving in India. This was also an example of corporate greed through deception; what, only $5 going to the cause out of a whopping $60 per ticket? Besides, note the symbolism of the costumed “Roman soldier.” It alludes to the Roman Empire, where the rich and powerful would pig out and puke just to be in-your-face to their commoners that they could afford to eat so much, with slaves mopping up the vomit under the table.
What makes me puke is the frequent depictions of how-much-can-you-eat of this or that on multiple TV shows, juxtaposed simultaneously with global news of America tightening the noose around country after country through these euphemistically labeled “sanctions.” It may not be their leaders who they succeed in getting rid of; rather, it is their people who starve.
Arun Anand Ahuja
UNM student
