Quick Bites: Want Fries/Waffles/Cereal With That?

• 411mania.com has a good column up summarizing what the federal food police have been up to in the last few years, especially in the arena of sugary cereal.
• Here's another good read: "Federal Food Police Against Business and Science" by Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute.
• Well, this is going to provoke the fry-haters: McD's has brazenly launched a web promotion centered around their fries. (Note, however, how small the serving is.)
• Food symbolism is all over the Republican Presidential race. Cain has been tagged as the Pizza Man, and now Huntsman says Romney is "running for the Waffle House" (it's a flip-flop joke, you see).
•  Irish Times reports: "The Government is considering introducing a ban on fast-food outlets near schools, following the publication of a report on obesity in nine-year-olds." Pointlessness knows no borders.
• Walter Russell Mead has been writing a very thoughtful blog series on the disintegration of what he calls "the blue social model." I'm not sure what his politics are (I'm guessing center-left or slightly libertarian) but I think this line from his recent post succinctly captures the mentality of the food police and the larger liberal-elitist movement: "Money and power for the government enable the upper middle class good government types to dream up new schemes to help us all live better lives and give government the resources for the various social, ecological and cultural transformations on the ever-expandable goo-goo to-do list that range from a global carbon tax to fair trade coffee cooperatives and the war on saturated fat. All these programs (some useful in the Via Meadia view, others much less so) require a transfer of funds and authority from society at large to well-socialized, well-credentialed and well-intentioned upper middle class types who get six figure salaries to make sure the rest of us behave in accordance with their rapidly evolving notions of correct behavior."