Throw another Skippy on the Barbie

4 Comments

1. snackrabbit said,

   11.21.05 at 2:41 pm

   Cow and Beef basically have the same word origins…so there isn’t any reason to suspect what you are suspecting. I’d be far more suspicious of “nuggets”, “strips”, “patties” and so forth.

   From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000:

   That beef comes from cows is known to most, but the close relationship between the words beef and cow is hardly household knowledge. Cow comes via Middle English from Old English c, which is descended from the Indo-European root *gwou–, also meaning “cow.” This root has descendants in most of the branches of the Indo-European language family. Among those descendants is the Latin word bs, “cow,” whose stem form, bov-, eventually became the Old French word buef, also meaning “cow.” The French nobles who ruled England after the Norman Conquest of course used French words to refer to the meats they were served, so the animal called c by the Anglo-Saxon peasants was called buef by the French nobles when it was brought to them cooked at dinner. Thus arose the distinction between the words for animals and their meat that is also found in the English word-pairs swine/pork, sheep/mutton, and deer/venison. What is interesting about cow/beef is that we are in fact dealing with one and the same word, etymologically speaking

2. beesucker said,

   11.21.05 at 2:57 pm

   Snackrabbit wrote:

   Cow and Beef basically have the same word origins…so there isn’t any reason to suspect what you are suspecting. I’d be far more suspicious of “nuggets”, “strips”, “patties” and so forth.

   This was not a suspicion as much as a ‘wondering’. Besides, we still use this word of ‘beef’ as opposed to ‘cow’, despite its ambiguity. If they have the same meaning, why consistently use one over the other? It may be a subtle way of removing oneself from the killing act, or maybe it is a way of obscuring a mental image of the animal being eaten. That may be the problem with ‘Kangaroo’ as well. When I think of ‘kangaroo’, i think of a hopping, cute thing. My appetite isn’t stired. Same with Cow. But ‘beef’, makes me think of a tasty chewy treat. So maybe ‘Skippy’ will get our mouths watering in the future. Therefore, there may be a subtle psychological reason for using ‘beef’. Marketing seeks, I think, to manipulate people based on subtle psychology and in the case of the article, this link is pretty apparent.

3. snackrabbit said,

   11.21.05 at 5:06 pm

   Ha! I didn’t read the article! But my point was just that the names we currently use for meats are likely due more to historical non-marketing factors than some sort of lobbying effort. I think we probably now refer to these things by these names (beef, pork, poultry) probably just because the connotation of the original words changed slightly to where those names meant the animal as product. I wonder if the distinction exists in other languages.

   I wish it were different, as I’d very much like to see the ad for a 1/4lb cow patty…

   p.s. I remember Ms. Pettis, my economics teacher in some year of high school, telling us that the Wendy’s Where’s The Beef campaign came about in the 80’s as a response to another fast food company (Jack in the Box?) supposedly using Kangaroo meat in their burgers. Apparently there was a huge surplus of wild kangaroo and they were shot and sold and some of the meat was incorporated into the Jack in the Box burgers. I have no idea if this is true and I won’t research it.

4. beesucker said,

   11.21.05 at 7:22 pm

   I have heard the same rumor! I couldn’t find any connection to the Wendy’s add campaign but I found these links:

   This says it is not true about the Kangaroo meat.

   This too.

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