We live in a hateful society. Personally, I’m a peace & love guy, but society at large is looking for people and things to hate. Earth is a polarizing place. People take sides … on just about everything and in most cases it seems about even, liberal or conservative, hamburger or hot dog, Ford or Chevy. Lots of people are genuine in their convictions while others take one side or the other just to be difficult – I dislike Penguin shirts because Carl likes ’em.

People seem to save their most aggressive hate for food and a lot of this hate makes perfect sense. Some flavors and textures and concepts just make you heave. Pickles are stupid and deserve to be hated. Mustard can make you regurgitate simply at the sight of the yellow container. Anchovies and sour cream and anything green never need to be brought to the table again. Things that swim, especially life forms that have spent their entire lives trapped in a shell should never sit on a plate in a civilized society. Animals were put on this earth to eat but knocking off lambs and bunnies is really a low blow and we should be better than that.

We all basically agree that lots of things should never be ingested and that the people who eat a lot of this crap – the beef tongue lovers among us – should be singled out and shamed and shunned, especially around mealtimes.

But, in a world with so many clearly disgusting foods, one phenomenon has never made any sense to me – the overwhelming dislike for raisins.

I don’t know what it is but people hate the raisin. It’s true. Is it because he’s a bit shriveled up? Because if it is I can tell you that just about everyone I know is a shriveled-up mess and we don’t hate them for it.

I stand by the raisin. I personally take offense to those that talk bad about him, to those that bite into an oatmeal raisin cookie and spit him out. He’s a wonderful little snack and refreshingly simple in an age of ridiculous complexity.

Why is there all this love for grapes and so much raisin disrespect? Raisins are just old grapes and, well, they’re just better than grapes. Ever try to put a little box of grapes in your pocket? Have you tried a slice of grape toast? Barf. When’s the last time you took a close look at the bonneted Sun-Maid raisin lady? Pretty hot in a “Little House On The Prairie” kinda way, right? Well, I don’t see any hot chick mascot for your precious little grapes. And raisins are totally Californian, so, like, dig it, dude. No lie, California raisin growers produce 100 percent of U.S. raisins while the fancy-pants grapes you eat are grown in Chile and other third-world countries and if you wouldn’t drink the water there, why would you eat the grapes?

Maybe it’s a case of everyone picking on the little guy. The teensy innocent raisin is an easy target, he just gets tossed into the pile of other dried fruits, especially the date, which are totally disgusting. It’s hate by association.

It makes me sad that such a delicious and friendly and healthy snack is so misunderstood. In generations past, people knew that raisins were actually “nature’s candy” but today little kids mostly shove raisins up their nose and people are constantly saying mean things behind the raisin’s dried-out wrinkly little back.

The world would be a better place if we all just rallied around the humble little raisin … if we all ate a couple of handfuls a day, if we filled bowls with Raisin Bran and added raisins to every kind of cookie.

And if that’s a bridge too far I would simply ask that if you can’t say something nice about adorable dried fruit, don’t say anything at all. Raisins have feelings too.

Photo credit: Prayitno / Thank you for (12 millions +) view on Visual Hunt / CC BY