Among the things whose increasing popularity always surprises me...Kale, the leafy green that's so good slow-cooked with a hambone and some potatoes. I thought I was the only kale fan in town, but all the healthy people are gobbling it up. And so am I.
And...man-made diamonds are a big thing now, and whereas it used to be a scandal when a guy would pop the question with a cubic zirconium ring in his hand, now it seems that one in three couples is turning up their nose at natural diamonds and going with lab-grown stones for their engagement ring.
After all, who can tell the difference?
The wedding site The Knot says 36% engaged men pulled a lab-grown diamond out of their pockets last year, and that reflects a 100% increase since 2020.
And the sales of natural diamonds are down by 25%.
The appeal of man-made rocks, let's face it, has to be the price, but being able to ask someone to walk down Matrimony Lane with a sustainable alternative is pretty cool, too.
This being a very flashy day and age, a lot of people want to tote around a Plymouth Rock-sized rock, and those are much less money when they're manmade.
Why, fashion leaders such as Gigi Hadid, who could walk past me in the produce aisle without me knowing who she is, and Meghan Markle - I know her; she married Happy Harry - are strutting around with the fakeroos on their hands and everybody says it's fine.
For you bottom-line types, you can have a one-carat lab-grown diamond for around $1,430. A mined diamond - pure carbon from way down inside Earth- of the same size is going to run you $5,635.
A lot of people object to diamond mining. The process itself, using fuels, hydrocarbons and earth-digging machinery, is said to be part of climate change, and certainly air pollution. And the human rights violations inflicted on diamond miners are too numerous to mention, so we won't, but let's salute the people getting married without spending the equivalent of the annual defense budget of Liechtenstein on a left-hand third-finger doodad.
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