According to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), "peanut butter is a simple mixture of ground peanuts and salt... nearly all peanut butter is 100 percent vegan." Yet, when I walked through my dining hall to peruse the toppings at the salad bar, I saw a jar of peanuts next to the various bottles of dressing and Craisins. The label on the peanut jar read "Peanuts. Vegan - contains peanuts." Of course, I understand that the college had to write "contains peanuts" because they're an extremely dangerous and potentially lethal allergen. However, I almost laughed out loud when I read the word "vegan." Was it necessary? Is there any physically possible way in which peanuts could NOT be vegan?

Somehow, I feel like this label would only happen in the state of California. As they say in my native state of Tennessee, vegetables are what food eats, so I may be a little biased. I grabbed my friend and pulled her over to point out what I saw as a ridiculously redundant label, almost as bad as the Department of Redundancy Department.

"Hey," I asked her, "don't you think they would make millions selling vegan peanut butter at Trader Joe's? I bet that stuff would fly off the shelves." She thought for a second, and responded, "wait, isn't peanut butter already vegan?" Feeling like a wise-ass, I smirked and said, "that's exactly my point." Because I know it would be lauded as "the best thing since sliced bread," vegan peanut butter, in my opinion, is an excellent microcosmic example of our generation.

We are such an odd group of people - we create problems out of nothing and then applaud ourselves when we invent unnecessary and expensive solutions. For instance, the non-GMO (genetically modified organism) movement has failed to prove that GM foods are actually bad for people, yet it has taken activists by storm. Worse, it has completely sidetracked America from more important health issues, like childhood obesity rates and false advertising of "healthy" foods. Genetically modified foods were created to more efficiently feed the world's growing population while requiring less fertilizer and fewer resources. We have been eating these for over a decade, and there has been no GMO-related, statistically significant increase in cancer in our nation overall. Yet, we have chosen to pioneer this movement against an incredibly helpful invention while ignoring literally bigger problems, like the fact that over one third of American children and adolescents were overweight or obese in 2012, according to the CDC.

We've done the same thing with the organic food fad - the Mayo Clinic admits that organic food probably isn't any more nutritious for you, yet Americans are willing to pay twice as much for it and then feel high and mighty about themselves for spending exorbitant amounts of money to fix something that wasn't even a problem. I understand that organic food uses lower amounts of pesticides, which are terrible for the environment. However, GMOs were invented with the very hope that they would require fewer pesticides, too.

I suppose my point is that I'm upset by the issues my generation chooses to designate as important. We mobilize and protest about the unproven harms caused by GM foods that were designed to help us, yet we completely forget about the disgraceful way that we treat veterans in this country. We spend millions of our dollars supporting Hollywood by going to movies, but we ignore that Los Angeles literally has a cloud of smog over it at all times because of the pollution generated by the city. We take up arms against vaccinations that have been proven to have no effect on autism rates, but forget the millions of lives they have saved from disease outbreaks. I get why Baby Boomers are so quick to criticize us - sometimes, we Millennials just don't make any sense.