As much as I admire and appreciate The Crusader Whose Name Sounds Like Bee Fodder, to the point that he spoke and I obeyed on Holy Foods, I’m not quite convinced of his new crusade to throw a diet saddle onto the health reform horse. I’m gimping evidence of the reality that you can eat well and exercise and in a heartbeat still wind up causing expensive damage to your only body. All the fast food reforms in the world would not have precluded that happening. And so I hear calls for taxes on soda and stop cold: Diet soda is no better than the fructosy crap; in fact, it may be worse. I agree that Americans are eating horribly and Big Food + Big Pharma is making it worse; Harper’s years ago pointed out that a bad diet that turned the whole country diabetic could be very lucrative for both industries. But now that Holy Foods has moved into my neighborhood, I’m starting to realize you really do catch more flies with organic sugar than even the most esoteric vinegar. I’ve only been inside a couple of times, but I am always struck by how wide-eyed other shoppers are in a neighborhood so starved of serious food; they look, I imagine, the way medieval peasants did on setting foot into the cathedral at Chartres. But this glory is accessible in the here and now. Make vegetables sexy, put the processed crap farther away, and yes, they will come. In a battle of Dunkin’ Subway v Holy F, I’m afraid I’m on the side of sanctimonious.