gastropoda

I am never at my best in the morning, especially Sunday morning, but I still could not quite grasp what my consort was waving under my face in a certain supplement. He was saying something about patently crude Photoshopping — “Look how sharply her dress cuts in right here; that’s gotta be fake” — and I was trying to figure out why he would be outraged by a diet ad. Then it sank in, and so did I, right into the jaw-dropping editorial copy. A cookbook author who was once obese is now merely fat, and she’s got a diet book to promote. I’m sorry, when you are 5 feet, 4 inches tall (even 5/5 if you want to add in that alleged half-inch) you are not exactly a role model at 150 pounds. Once upon a time, before publishers routinely swallowed tales of cornbread and black-eyed peas as gangland veracity, an author would have been required to shrink at least to “normal” size (for a woman, 5 pounds for every inch over 5 feet). Maybe this inspiring tale with recipes will give some 400-pounder hope, but if I thought running and restricting would only get me down to the last notch on a regular airplane seat belt, I’d head straight for Dunkin’ Donuts. After all, I now know a new trick: Instead of stepping into your old fat pants for the before/after photo, you can stand behind them and keep the avoirdupois to yourself. As Stephen Colbert might say, “I am size 8, and so can you.” Except 8 is the new 14.

I can’t imagine surimi is any better for you than the steak of the sea even with mercury in it. But I’m no expert, and the one Time magazine found said it best: Readers are done no favors by single-food scare stories. On a petty level, I did wonder why the store next door was, yet again, given a pass in the testing; it only is about the biggest seafood retailer in town. And it should not have taken a listen to Brian Lehrer to hear from a real authority how the dangerous stuff actually gets into the tuna to begin with. Phyllis Richman predicted many years ago that sushi would  become the new hamburger. If we can swallow the reality  of mad cow and E. coli, what’s a little industrial spillover? We do like to leave the lights on and the microwaves humming in this country. . . .

In other nutrition nuttiness, let the “consumer advocates” rail against NYC’s new rule requiring certain restaurants to post calorie counts. As I must have said a thousand times, I have not eaten a Mrs. Fields cookie since learning back in the last century that each one contains about 260 calories. And I was, back then, a scholar when it came to the back of Fritos bags. So all those defenders of the public’s right to be stupid, the ones who say anyone can easily discern the difference between a bucket of chicken wings and a salad, should be sentenced to Southwest-salad-with-crispy-chicken hell. With Big Gulp cholesterol drugs for the ride.

By contrast, I was happily surprised by the junk brochure from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia that my consort dropped off on my desk the other day. A promotion for a health web site, it included not just a notice of a “dark chocolate and red wine reception” but a photo of and recipe for a salad made with warm goat cheese in a panko crust. We’ve come a long way from the “pasta makes you fat” attitude toward healthful eating. I’m not sure, though, I would want a tour of the Mutter Museum after that reception. Elephantiasis is a terrible petit four.

A more clever writer than I had the perfect take on DI/DO’s bizarre take on food allergies in children: Someone looks to have been poached in the crazy sauce. And if Mr. Sneaky Food gets away with saying worse than that on national teevee, why are we all so hesitant to call a pignoli a nut?

I had actually dropped $6.95 on a copy of Harper’s in December after spotting a cover line on how hyped that “trend” is, and I had actually thought the debate was closed after reading that taut takedown. Fear is America’s most lucrative industry anymore, though, so it’s no wonder the next allergy item I read was on Slashfood: Some delis in Wegmans supermarkets will no longer allow unaccompanied minors to order food for fear of the big A. As if it wasn’t bad enough that you can no longer get a peanut on a plane and have to suffer pretzels that would choke a Chimp. Forget the nanny state. The crazy mommy state is going to be the death of all of us.

Talk about a confederacy of dunces — the great WSJ story on how horses are suffering as the economy goes to hell is a telling example of what happens when the Chimp’s incompetence meets the cretinism of bleeding-heart airheads. Letting high-maintenance animals starve because the slaughterhouses have been shut down is not exactly enforcing their rights. There are worse things than butchering Trigger for dinner.

Thanks to Chow’s Grinder, the one clog with bite, I see Chicago is not stopping with banning a food only a minuscule fraction of its population even eats. Now that the village idiots have come for the duck livers, they are turning their evil eyes on chickens raised in backyards. The justification is that chickenshit attracts rats. And if that’s the case, the City Council chambers must be overrun.

Judging by the dustup over a piece by a Murdoch refugee granted asylum at the Taj Sulzberger, bumper stickers on nutrition nazis’ cars should read: Figures lie and liars figure. The dutiful regurgitation of a “study” finding that “healthy eating really does cost more” prompted literally hundreds of comments, some of which actually made sense. A smarter lede would have laid out the truth that “empty calories cost less,” which is no accident given a Congress in thrall to Big Food lobbyists rather than sensitive to small-scale growers. It’s the same kind of sleight of word that made a Coke seem a better nutritional investment than a small cup of Haagen-Dazs at the height of the low-fat insanity, when crazy studies were flying by wildly. The most amusing part was when the verbal scrum turned into an ode to lentils, which Ms. 401K angrily insisted “no one could eat every day.” Tell that to nearly a billion Indians. . . .

Having dutifully ordered my heritage turkey to save a breed by eating one of its own, I was feeling a little shaky on calculating that I had just spent more on one piece of the big meal than what an entire month of PT co-pays would cost me. But then I went to buy milk on Union Square and heard a vendor at the next booth telling a customer, “No, he got the seeds in the divorce.” And I realized my investment was not in vain. Clean food should have real value in a world of bacteria burgers and high-fructose everything. Having gotten a thank-you email from the purveyors, though, I also have a little warning to anyone who might be tempted to sneak off and buy a far cheaper ordinary turkey, no matter how free-range or organic or Wagyu-pampered: It’s a small wattle after all. They know if you are being bad or good. . . .