Why everything has to taste like chicken!

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away it was rumoured that everything tasted like chicken.

“This is a good thing.” Ventured the people who lived there and were eating everything.

“No, this is not good,” said the chickens, “we are all unique individuals, experiencing our own reality and all to be seen in our own personal light.”

“Hmmm, I see your point,” said the people, “but chicken is so tasty, it would be a shame if everything tasted like anything else.”

“But how do you know?” Asked the chickens, “If you have never tasted what anything else tastes like then how do you know whether it would better or worse than chicken?”

“Hmmm, I see your point,” said the people again, “but what motivation is there for us, the people, to stop liking chicken and develop a relationship with new flavours?”

“You do not have to give up liking chicken.” Said the chickens, who were beginning to despair at the ignorance of man. “In fact we want to encourage you to still like chicken, we want it to be your favourite flavour above all other flavours in the galaxy. We are proud of the way we taste and feel we are exceptional but you do not notice this because in your minds, everything else tastes like us.”

“Hmmm, I see your point.” said the people, “Ok, well from tomorrow then, we shall stop thinking of every flavour as tasting like you and we shall allow them, the flavours, to taste as they want to taste. If we do not like a thing then we shall stop eating it rather than fake the flavour.”

“Ok, right.” Said the chickens.

“Right, well that’s that sorted then.” Said the people.

“Oh bugger.” Said the snails.

So, right from the following day, the people stopped thinking of every flavour as being chicken and allowed each flavour to bring their own personal uniqueness to the people’s  mouths.

The people ate beef which comes from cows and realised how very tasty it was. It was nothing like chicken at all. Neither was mutton which comes from sheep and neither was baby sheep anything like chicken at all. These meats were not like beef either, they were in fact completely unique flavours.

The people were growing more and more excited as each day went by and more flavours presented themselves.

Pork, especially the fat which people called crackling, was exceedingly popular and apple sauce. There was a new resurgence in the people buying  aubergine, pumpkin, butternut squash and courgettes that previously the people had avoided because they felt the just tasted like chicken. Now the people got excited by a huge variety of vegetables and fruit too.

The galaxy was a transformed living space. More and more animals were being killed and slaughtered to feed the people who hungered for better and better flavours. Rainforests were destroyed to make room for the land needed for all the new animals to graze and for rich land barons to build vast glass cities where field after field of beautiful vegetables were grown in a forced atmosphere.

The chickens themselves were put into cages in barns and forced to lay hundreds of eggs in a short time and when that time was up, if the chickens had survived any of the many new chicken diseases, they were taken out of the cages and had their scrawny little necks wrung to kill them.

Chicken meat was still popular but not as before. The people were hungry for new things and in a deeply hypocritical move, they were hungry for free things, not things in cages. Oh dear, the poor chickens had been reduced to the lowest class of animal in the galaxy, lower even than wild boars.

“I don’t like this chicken, it tastes like beef.” Said a young child one day.

“Let me taste that.” Said his insistent father who gobbled down a mouthful very quickly. “By jingo you’re right.” He declared, “This does actually taste like beef and not good beef either. Taste this darling.” He added as he passed the chicken to his wife who also tasted the meat and concurred with her son and husband.

So now the poor chicken’s flavour, of which they were once so very, very proud was reduced to that of poor quality beef and the people ate less and less chicken from that day on.

“Oh woe are we who were so foolish.” said the chickens.

“In what way foolish?” Said the people. “You led and inspired a flavour revolution among us people that we would never have thought of ourselves.”

“Yes, we did this to inspire you though to prefer our flavour to that of any other flavour in the galaxy but now we have been caged and reduced in your opinion to taste like poor quality beef. We have ended up with egg all over our faces.” Said the chickens.

“Hmmm, I see your point.” Said the people. “Before, when we thought everything tasted like chicken we just ate a mild amount of everything and appreciated that the flavour was chicken. To us then, chicken was a fine flavour that we had picked out as the best flavour above all others which is why we chose that flavour for everything to taste like.”

“Exactly.” Said the chickens. “Where as now, you have discovered how much you like other flavours and are exploiting them and destroying your home to make room for them and you have become so glutted that you no longer care about the flavour and think that our flavour is no longer good.”

“Hmmm, I see your point.” Said the people, “We have done a lot of damage to ourselves and our home and to you. How do we redress this balance?”

“We are not sure that you can.” Said the chickens. “There are those among you who for years have been screaming out about how much damage you have done to your home and how much cruelty you have shown animals, especially your once so favoured chickens, but these screams have been ignored by you.

“You are separated from the animal kingdom because you have original thought and freedom of choice yet even when the truth is screamed out to you by your own kind, you cannot hear them and you do not care. Instead you grow fat and greedy and want more and more than you ever did before. You have become poisoned. We think it is all the beef you eat, we think it clogs your minds. You did not have these problems when you ate more chicken and believed in our flavour.”

“But we cannot just stop believing in these new flavours now that we have discovered them can we?” The people retorted. “We have other things to worry about besides your welfare. There are wars and starvation in the galaxy.”

“There is starvation in your galaxy?” Asked the chickens who were very surprised to hear this given how greedy the people had become. “So you have destroyed your rainforests and cleared your lands and developed super powerful corporations who have a firm grip on all the galaxy’s economy and yet there are still people starving?”

“Yes.” Said the people.

“And you will not do anything about this?” Asked the chickens.

“But what can we do?” Asked the people, pleading to the chicken’s superior wisdom.

“Ask God for help.” The chickens suggested.

“Who is he?” The people replied.

“God, you know, the one that created mankind, the galaxy and all the things in it.” The chickens pointed out.

“Oh, him.” said the people who suddenly realised they used to believe in a thing called God. “We have not heard of him for a very long time. He does not seem important to us now.”

“And neither does the balance of the galaxy nor the flavours you put in your mouths.” Said the chickens with sadness.

“So you think we can reset the balance if we turn back to believing in God?” Asked the people.

“Possibly,” the chickens replied, “or you could try believing everything tastes like chicken again, you might find that easier.”

“Hmmm, I see your point.” said the people, “Ok, well from tomorrow then, we shall try to get back to thinking of every flavour as being chicken.”

The following day, the people launched the “Chicken Revolution”.

They went to their supermarkets and bought all the chickens, so much so that the supermarkets ran out of chicken stocks and farmers had to grow more chickens. And because the people were now so convinced that their food had to be grown in freedom, the chickens were released from their cages and allowed to wander about in big barns and fields.

As the people ate more and more chicken, their tastes changed and they began to crave the chickens but the farmers could not produce enough chickens to feed everybody. So the people, who craved the chicken flavour so much once again, once again started to convince themselves that all other flavours tasted like chicken. This satisfied the people.

The people ate less and less beef and pork, so the land that had once been cleared for grazing was set aside for Rainforest Restoration Projects. The starving Peoples of the galaxy were given the excess beef and pork for a short while but it was enough time for them to grow strong enough to rebuild their communities and start farming for themselves as they were more productive and more able to control their own destinies.

Evil governments who caused famine and wars were voted out of power because the people, who had seen the errors of their ways, were not afraid anymore. Those corporations who had once controlled the galaxy’s economies were forced to share their business practises and allow smaller companies to flourish.

“How do you feel now?” Asked the chickens.

“Much better, thank you for all you have done for us.” Said the people. “You have helped us restore our galaxy back to a time when we were happy so now we are happy again and everything has a balance.

“Yes,” concurred the chickens, “everything has a balance. Everything tastes like chicken.”