The New York Times published an article on 16 February 2019 with the headline: You’re Addicted to Plastic? Can You Go Cold Turkey? What does ‘go cold turkey’ mean and what does turkey have to do with plastic?
What does going cold turkey mean? The Free Dictionary defines the phrase as ‘to stop doing or using something abruptly and completely.’ The Free Dictionary continues: ‘the image is of one of the possible unpleasant side effects of this, involving bouts of shivering and sweating that cause goose flesh or goose pimples, a bumpy condition of the skin which resembles the flesh of a dead plucked turkey.’
Therefore, the article is asking readers, who are addicted to plastic, whether they can suddenly stop using it.
What does the article say?
The article begins dramatically and visually with the image of dead birds: ‘For Beth Terry, the epiphany came when she read an article about how albatross chicks are being killed by discarded plastics. It was time to banish plastic from her life.’
Let’s disregard the passive voice of this sentence (yes, it would have been better to state, ‘… an article about how discarded plastics kill albatross chicks.’).
The article continues to equate plastic addiction to drug addiction: ‘Treating plastic like a drug habit that needs to be kicked is a lifestyle pledge being shared by more and more consumers, horrified by the tens of millions of metric tons of plastic created worldwide each year, much of it in the form of single-use items, like straws, that end up in the landfills or, worse, the oceans.’
Let’s disregard the passive voice of this sentence again (yes, it would have been better to state, ‘Treating plastic like a drug habit that more and more consumers share as a lifestyle pledge that needs to be kicked …). And let’s clarify that ‘a drug habit that needs to be kicked’ means that the drug habit needs to be ‘overcome.’
The article advocates for, and describes, a step by step process for reducing plastic in one’s life, rather than ‘going cold turkey.’ It’s a long article with many examples of people gradually eliminating single-use plastics and taking cloth bags and other reusable items when they go shopping. Yet, the article never mentions cold turkey.
Scorecard for The New York Timesheadline is 60%. The article doesn’t repeat the headline phrase in the article, nor does it mention meat (such as turkey meat) and how to take it home without its plastic wraps and containers. Instead, it mentions a farming couple who raise their own pigs and chicken for food. There are lots of example about vegetables and other products. But, no cold turkey, no hot turkey, and not even a dead turkey.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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