I’ve got no great beef with the organic food movement (even if its claims are a little unrealistic), but it’s still interesting to note that Graham’s health food store—in 1837—heavily promoted its food as being grown according to “physiological principles” on “virgin unvitiated soil.” By the retro-fetishism of the time, this was soil that had not been “subjected” to “overstimulation”…by manure.
