February 23, 2006
Gut feelings about junk food
UPDATE: Just when you're ready to throw in the towel, Alice Waters comes along with some sage advice to restore the soul. A Delicious Revolution indeed!
Harriet Brown, a poet in Wisconsin, gets it. The New York Times printed her Op-Ed essay titled "Go With Your Gut" this week.
Her point, like Mireille Guiliano's in French Women Don't Get Fat, is that we should simply enjoy the food we eat.
Ironically, the Times itself, doesn't get it. An editorial yesterday argues that "Government" should regulate the advertising of junk food to youngsters on TV.
That's the same refrain we hear regularly from the Food-Is-Bad cranks.
Marketing drives the demand for junk food, sure. But the problem's not whiney kids, it's lazy or stressed-out parents battered by the media and the Pleasure Police. The bad guys aren't so much Kraft or the makers of Twinkie's (think of them as co-conspirators), they're the scolds at the so-called Center for Science in the Public Interest. Shame on the Times for listening.