MORE BAD NEWS FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Borscht is an eastern European delicacy, a soup made of beets and various other things depending on where in eastern Europe it is being made. There are numerous commercially-sold varieties of borscht, available in most grocery stores. It's great served cold in summer, but pretty good in winter too. Borscht is a robust and nourishing dish, high in fiber, folate, vitamin C, and various polysyllabic substances that combat cancer and heart disease (for more info, see http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=49 )

Mr. Dissociated and I periodically go on binges of eating lots of borscht. But this month's binge has caused a surprising amount of trouble. All of a sudden, I have difficulty finding just plain borscht. Thank heaven nobody is manufacturing chocolate borscht, or cherry vanilla borscht. No, what they're doing is taking things out of the borscht. You can now get borscht without sugar. Without salt. Low-calorie. No sodium. "Clear" borscht (no pieces of beet.) If you look really hard, you can sometimes find "borscht with chopped beets."

The word mavens call that a "retronym." Like "acoustic guitar," or "manual shift," or "solar clothes-drying." What just plain borscht used to be before the tinkerers got at it and started taking things out. No wonder we all suffer from road rage and air rage and hospital rage and everything rage--you can't even get a decent bowl of borscht any more! Western civilization is doomed, doomed I tell you!