Did Marjorie Taylor Greene Say ‘Peach Tree Dish’ Instead Of Petri Dish?

If you’ve never ever seen something grown in a “Peach Tree Dish,” you may want to ask the “Gazpacho Police” for some answers. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) posted another episode of her MTG:Live on Facebook Live. And this was another live one, so to speak.

On this latest episode, Taylor Greene, who once ranted about the “Gazpacho Police” when she may have meant “Gestapo” instead, made a bunch of claims without really providing much of that little thing called evidence. For example, she claimed that “You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance of every part of your life. They want to know when you are eating,” as you can see in the video clip accompanying the following tweet:

Let’s get this straight. Taylor Greene was warning people about “surveillance” and being tracked while she was talking to them on Facebook, which incidentally does track viewers’ activity, as Kate O’Flaherty described for Forbes last year. In the clip, Taylor Greene continued with, “They want to know when you are eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat this fake meat that grows in a ‘peach tree dish’ so you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body that’ll say ‘No, don’t eat a real cheeseburger, you need to eat the fake burger.’”

Wait, hold on a sect. Or is it sec? Did Taylor Greene actually say “peach tree dish” instead of Petri dish. Apparently, a lot of people did indeed hear her say those peachy words and then subsequently did tweet about it. All of this led to “Peach Tree Dish” and #PeachTreeDish to trend on Twitter. Here’s one example of such a tweet from podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen:

It’s not completely clear what a “peach tree dish” might be. Would it be a dish with a picture of a peach tree on it? Or perhaps a dish with a peach tree growing in it? Or maybe it’s what happens when you eat peach cobbler on your roof way too close to your satellite TV dish? Regardless, a “Peach Tree Dish” would not be how you’d pronounce a “Petri dish.” The following video from winemaker and YouTuber Julien Miquel presented both the British and American pronunciations of Petri dish:

Yes, the American version of Petri does sound a bit like “pee tree,” which is something that your dog might produce. Nonetheless, the Petri dish got its name not from any tree but instead from Julius Richard Petri, a German bacteriologist credited with inventing in 1887 this dish-ish container. Since then the Petri dish, like the test tube, has become a mainstay of biomedical laboratories. A Petri dish is a relatively shallow, see-through container made out of either glass or plastic that looks like the following:

As you can see, the shallowness of this dish allows you to fill it with a rather thin layer of substances known as culture media used to grow microorganisms or other types of cells. Such containers typically come with lids that can cover the top of the dish so that you can store or lift it and look at it in a very earnest way like this scientist is doing here:

Petri actually came up with the dish by modifying the original design of German physician Robert Koch, whom Petri served as assistant for at Berlin University in Germany. So in theory, the dish could have been named the Koch dish, pronounced like “coke dish,” which could have subsequently led to some very interesting misunderstandings.

Now, people have used the words “grown in a Petri dish” as a generic phrase to suggest that something has been biomedically or even genetically engineered. Such a phrase could raise some rather frightening imagery reminiscent of movies like Resident Evil, Gattaca, and Jurassic Park. Therefore, your date telling you that you look like you were grown in a Petri dish may suggest that there won’t be a second date. Would such wording be an accurate description of all so-called “fake meat” or “alternative meat” products? Not necessarily. The term “alternative meat” encompasses a lot of different possibilities and doesn’t necessarily mean that a product was created in a biomedical laboratory.

In fact, a number of different meat substitutes have been around for hundreds and even thousands of years, long before the Petri dish or any modern lab equipment were invented. For example, tofu, otherwise known as bean curd because it is made from soybeans, emerged in China sometime between the years 206 BC and 220 AD. Wheat gluten also made its debut in China several centuries later in the sixth century AD. Throughout the years, many different folks have tried grounding up various types of nuts, grains, soy, and other non-meat items to mimic meat in different ways. After all, trying different ways to mash up and combine food is what humans have always done. Anyone who has kids and has tried their chocolate covered everythings will realize that food experimentation will always happen. Without such experimentation, you wouldn’t have the hot dog, the French fry, or the cheeseburger. So the idea of meat substitutes in general shouldn’t be considered a new scary concept.

Plus, there’s no indication that the government or anyone else will force you to eat “fake meat” rather than real meat. That would be very Oh Well-ian or maybe Orwellian. Sure some have suggested that removing meat from everyone’s diets in favor of completely plant-based diets would be beneficial for health and could help prevent further climate change. But such broad, sweeping suggestions may be oversimplifying the situation. Not all meat substitutes would necessarily be better for your health than real meat. For example, some meat substitutes may be loaded with excessive salt, sugar, and other additives or highly processed in a way that’s similar to junk food. On the hand, if a meat substitute is really grown in an actual peach tree without much subsequent processing then yes it could in fact be good for you.