Now That's A Stuffed Crust

Improbably, our nation is falling behind in the stuffed-crust pizza race. Pizza Hut UK unveiled a hot dog-stuffed pizza. "Pizza Hut's contribution to British cuisine," CSPI snarked on its Facebook page. To which I say, the Brits have never been known for their cuisine to begin with.

Not to be outdone, Pizza Hut Middle East concocted a pizza 'crowned' with mini-cheeseburgers on the crust and burger toppings in the middle.

Pizza Hut Middle East also has a Crown Crust pizza with pieces of chicken fillet in the crust.

Considering how many food-policing laws and ideas come from abroad, it's nice to occasionally see some American-style food extravagance in other countries. These products go against the notion that Americans are the world's worst gluttons. France, the country considered most sophisticated in all things food, actually loves McDonald's and recently started selling McBaguette burgers. Fast food and fine cuisine can co-exist just fine, despite what any food snob might tell you.

P.S. Do you remember which conservative star appeared in one of the first Pizza Hut stuffed crust ads?

Food Deserts: Indefensible?

It's been a week since the food desert-debunking story broke. In the light of new research, both right-wing and left-wing media have criticized the notion that poor city-dwellers are more obese because a lack of healthy food sources where they live. Some have called it a well-intentioned myth and others an outright scam, but the consensus is that the existence of food deserts is not supported by facts.

There hasn't been any official response from the Administration or Let's Move yet. So the question is: will any reporter have the cojones to ask Michelle Obama about this debacle? Shouldn't she explain why we should spend $400 million to solve an imaginary problem?

I say we send this intrepid young reporter after her:

It's a sad state of affairs when a kid is asking tougher questions than professional journalists. Maybe the First Lady can squeeze in an interview between vacations.

P.S. If an urban area has a high population of dogs, could it still be considered a food desert?

‘Food Deserts’ Headed for the Dustbin

The case for the existence of so-called “food deserts” is drying up fast. The “theory” held that there are more obese children in poor urban areas because those areas supposedly had fewer grocery stores (good food) than fast-food joints (bad food).

“Eliminating these food deserts and making sure parents in every part of the country have access to fresh produce and healthy choices is a primary goal of Let’s Move,” reads a statement on letsmove.gov, the website for First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. She had even called on Congress to spend $400 million on a program to bring more supermarkets into food-deserted areas.

This 'food desert locator' seems like a waste of tax money now, doesn't it?

But two recent studies, from the Public Policy Institute of California and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, have actually found the opposite: poor urban areas have more grocery stores than affluent areas do. The studies found no link between the types of food available in the poor neighborhoods and child obesity.

“These studies demonstrate that the issue of obesity is more complicated than just a question of where you live, how much you earn, and how many McDonald’s are in your neighborhood,” says the American Council of Science and Health’s Dr. Ruth Kava. The New York Times calls the findings “unexpected,” which is the MSM adjective-of-choice when reality doesn’t go the Obama Administration’s way.

The administration had trouble defending the “food desert” concept last month, when Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was asked to define the term during a House hearing. Sebelius replied that it meant being further than a mile away from a grocery store, which she thought was too far to walk for healthy food, contradicting the First Lady’s recommendation that adults and children walk further than that every day.

Forget the whole thing, we say. “Let’s Move” on to a new talking point, Mrs. Obama.

Go Ahead. Take His Foie Gras.

In my 4/4 post, I finally got around to mentioning this excellent column by Walter E. Williams. I Facebooked it when I came across it last month, but it deserves a blog post. Williams, if you have not heard of him, is a conservative professor, syndicated columnist, and occasional guest host for Rush Limbaugh.

In this particular column, Williams drives home the point that overly compliant Americans, parents in particular, have allowed the nanny state to grow into a mommy-and-daddy state (without any of the warmth those names imply).

“Part of the problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated his daughter’s lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission?”

To our shame, he’s right. We live in a society where the president warns citizens that a Republican-run would leave us “on our own” and the media can portray a self-reliance-believing, Constitution-minded grassroots movement like the Tea Party as weird extremists. Too many people have lost sight of the fact that a democratic government exists to serve and represent the people, not the other way around.

Williams also writes, “I believe that the anti-tobacco movement partially accounts for today's compliant American. Tobacco zealots started out with ‘reasonable’ demands, such as the surgeon general's warning on cigarette packs.* Then they demanded nonsmoking sections on airplanes. Emboldened by that success, they demanded no smoking at all on airplanes and then airports and then restaurants and then workplaces—all in the name of health.” We are seeing the same thing happen now to soda, as local governments limit access to soda, use stimulus funds for anti-soda propaganda, and try to pass soda taxes.

Would you dare take this man's foie gras?

It’s not going to be easy to push this genie back in the bottle. But, in my favorite part of the column, Williams shows us how to throw down the gauntlet. “Here's my challenge to these people: Don't be a coward and use the state to accomplish your agenda. If you see Williams eating foie gras, just come up and take it off his plate.”

Williams is probably referring to the California foie gras ban, which was signed into law in 2004 and takes effect this July. Chefs in the state which is home to many of the country’s finest restaurants will be restricted from serving a classic French dish all because some animal-rights activists think that force-feeding the ducks to enlarge their livers is too cruel. (Ummm, hello, is it crueler than killing them afterwards?) We all know it would be wrong to walk over and take someone’s food away, so we should we let the state get away with it, even incrementally?

I wouldn't dare touch Williams’ duck liver but I’ll definitely grab more his columns going forward—I’ll be a better blogger and food-freedom warrior for it.

*The Surgeon General’s warning was just the beginning. The FDA now wants to put graphic images, including a dead body, on cigarette packs, if they can get it through the courts. If they succeed, I would imagine that dead-guy burger and soda labels would not be very far behind.
(Foie gras photo: myrecipes.com; Williams photo: gmu.edu)

Let Freedom Pop

Left-wingers may like freedom in theory but aren’t really fans of it in practice, because freedom means that people can make decisions they don’t like. And when freedom gets in the way of statist goals, they attack the definition of freedom. In a recent editorial in the Daily Beast, liberal commentator Michael Tomasky takes on what he terms as “the freedom to be fat,” decries massive tubs of movie popcorn, and says that many Americans don’t know “the difference between ‘freedom’ and mere selfishness or stupidity.”

(Photo: justpoppin.com)

“As part of the health-care law,” writes Tomasky, “new rules would require restaurants and other food-serving establishments to post nutritional information. Movie theaters were on the original list sent out by the FDA. But, the (New York) Times reports, after some White House intercessions, cinemas were dropped from the list.”

Tomasky points out that the largest servings of movie-theater popcorn contain a whole day’s worth of fat. But it’s estimated that the average American adult only  goes to the movies about four times per year, so even if you get the jumbo popcorn every time that’s not going to make you fat. And those jumbo popcorn buckets are often shared by two or more people. Evidence also shows that nutritional info posted in restaurants or other food-serving establishments have or little or no effect on what customers order.

But this is about more than popcorn. Tomasky goes on to the larger matter of personal freedom vs. government mandates: “… I don’t want to pass laws mandating the eating of broccoli. But I do want us to understand how wrong and simple-minded our definition of freedom is today. Any time the government appears to be suggesting some program aimed at getting people to do something that is obviously good for themselves—buying health insurance, not eating (huge buckets of popcorn)—a certain number of idiots jump up and cry ‘Ha! Nanny state! Taking away my freedom!’ This, according to that Times article, is what the Obama administration feared Fox and Glenn Beck would do if it issued too many new FDA rulings.”

Here, the author displays the irresistible liberal urge to dismiss those with opposing viewpoints as idiots, ignoramuses, bigots, etc. His argument is not that the idiots are wrong because the government is not trying to take away your freedom, it’s that the (well, we) idiots have the wrong definition of freedom. (Also, how often has Obama based policy around what Fox News would say? It’s clear his administration can’t stand that network.)

Tomasky argues that we need to redefine freedom in order to pave the way for the government intervention he wants. “Eating anything you want isn’t a definition of freedom,” Tomasky writes. “It’s just indulgence.”  I’d call it the freedom to be indulgent and to accept the consequences that go with it. I’m sure Tomasky would consider the choice not to indulge to be a legitimate freedom, so why is it a fake form of freedom to choose the opposite?

When the author questions “the freedom to be fat,” he’s really talking about the freedom to eat what you want. (“The freedom to be fat” is a skewed phrase because one can eat a certain amount of fatty foods without becoming fat.) If you’re only free to make the “right,” government-approved decision, you’re not really free. Fortunately, we get to choose which freedoms matter to us as free individuals. So pass that buttery popcorn and cherish your freedoms while I head back to the concession stand for the best cinema snack, Junior Mints.

Pink Slime: Get the Facts

• Real name: Lean finely textured beef
• About 95% lean (lower in fat than many other beef products)
• Approved by the FDA for nearly 40 years
• Often added to ground beef to increase the amount of protein
• Made using machines that extract more beef than otherwise possible, therefore producing more beef with less cows
• Contains a tiny amount of ammonia

So why all the hoopla? Why are restaurants and school cafeterias dropping pink slime left and right?

One reason is simply that finely textured beef looks kind of gross in its raw form and when coupled with the nickname ‘pink slime’ is especially unappetizing. Many people remember learning about Upton Sinclair’s meat-packing expose The Jungle (many claims of which were false even by Sinclair’s later admission) in high school and we harbor a fear that disgusting ingredients are hidden in our meat. I also have a pet theory that those of us who eat meat are at some deep level a little disgusted and even a tiny bit guilty that we consume animal flesh, and this type of thing brings out those buried feelings.

There may also be a political agenda at work here (surprise). Jeff Stier, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, writes that “the real (and ridiculous) agenda here is to make us all go organic.” And even if it can’t make that big of an impact on our eating habits, it can still be used by grandstanding politicians as another false threat they can pretend to protect us from.

(Hat tips to ConsumerFreedom.com & Townhall.com)

Political Aftertaste

Have you heard of the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn? It’s become the ultimate example of the trendy, PC grocery store. It’s more than one of those stores where most every product is labeled as environmentally safe or free range — it’s a place where the members recently held a vote on whether to boycott Israeli food products. In short, it makes Whole Foods sound like Walmart; in fact, some Park Slope residents have been up in arms because a Whole Foods is moving into town. Some parents in Park Slope have even made it known that they’d like to ban ice cream trucks from the local park.
 

Even The Daily Show thinks this co-op is over the top.

Most of us can laugh from a distance at the self-serious PSFC shoppers and their need to politicize every bite they eat. But unfortunately I think their mentality of food-buying-as-activism is creeping ever closer to the cultural mainstream.

Starbucks has gone all-in to support of same-sex marriage. In response, the National Organization for Marriage has started a “Dump Starbucks” campaign. Starbucks is following in the path of Ben & Jerry’s, which has used its ice cream containers to promote a number of lefty causes, including gay marriage. Meanwhile, Chick-Fil-A has unintentionally become embroiled in the SSM debate, as I’ve mentioned.

I don’t drink coffee, but if I did, I wouldn’t want to feel like I was taking sides in a heated cultural debate by ordering a Starbucks latte. And while I’m sympathetic to the general religious outlook of Chick-Fil-A, I eat there because I like the food, not because I’m trying to make a point or support a certain cause. I don't agree with Greece's economic philosophy, but I'm not going to stop eating Greek yogurt (a lot of which is made in the States, I know). I'm not amused by Miracle Whip's apparently serious use of socialist iconography but it's the taste that really keeps me from spreading it on my sandwich. It’s about the product, not the politics. Have we been brainwashed into thinking that we must only patronize businesses we fully agree with?

I give Time.com blogger Josh Ozersky credit for saying that although he doesn’t agree with Chick-Fil-A’s pro-traditional-marriage stance, he won’t let that stop him from eating there. “[B]usinesses should be judged on what they do — to their customers, their employees, their suppliers and their chickens — and not on what they do with their profits. That’s part of living in a free society too,” he writes, perhaps not realizing that leftist protesters don’t actually want a free society.

Of course, we’re not only judged by our choice of chicken restaurants; we have to get constant grief for eating beef.  The self-righteousness of the vegetarian movement may not be new but we’re increasingly being fed the idea that meat-eaters are enemies of the environment.

These thought trends are leading some people to judge others more by the content of their diet than their character. And the politicization of food can lead eventually to its regulation.  

What’s saddest is that people used to talk about “breaking bread” as way to get to know others. Food can be a great way to experience another culture. Food should be the one remaining thing that people can unite around but instead it’s becoming yet another way to divide us.

(Updated 4/10/12)

Don't Toy With Mickey D's ... Or With Mommy

In the food-wars arena, the deceptively childish-looking Happy Meal is a gladiator that no challenger has been able to take down. The Happy Meal Warrior recently outsmarted the bureaucrats in San Francisco and had a lawsuit against it tossed out by a California judge. The so-called Center for Science in the Public Interest was suing McDonald's for using toys to sell fast food to kids, a business practice that many nanny-staters would love to outlaw.

Last year, McDonald's tried to appease its critics by reducing the servings of fries in Happy Meals and adding apple slices, but this concession won't stop the food police's attacks or affect the obesity "epidemic."

CSPI responded to the dismissal of their lawsuit with a statement that included this hypocritical charge: "Using toys, of all things, to lure young children to fast-food meals is not responsible corporate behavior. It's a predatory practice that undermines parents, causes rifts in families, and harms kids' health."

Please. By seeking to limit choices and set themselves up as the ultimate authority on what kids are allowed eat, lobbying groups like the CSPI and government power-trippers undermine parents as part of their M.O. 'Undermining parents' is on the food cops' daily to-do list. In an excellent op-ed titled “Compliant Americans,” conservative columnist Walter Williams writes, “Seeing San Franciscan compliance (to the thwarted Happy Meal ban) may have been the source of inspiration for the North Carolina schoolteacher who took the 5-year-old girl's lunch.” Williams points out that in that infamous lunch-confiscation incident, “whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority.”


Outside groups have no business interfering with parents who want to reward their children from time to time with a kid's meal and a small, inexpensive toy. And if they're concerned about causing "rifts in families," CSPI should aim their criticism at government agencies that remove children from their own homes. Of course, when kids  are taken from their homes they won't be able to get Happy Meals, so maybe they're okay with that "predatory practice."