FOOD POLICE

This will be my last formal essay for a while. I'll be taking a rest but you can drop in occasionally to read more deep thoughts from a shallow mind.

FOOD POLICE

Is it just me, or are people I don’t even know trying to control my diet? I am being inundated by rules and regulations about what I can or rather should be eating and drinking. It’s not my fault that the Industrial Revolution and modern technology has turned us into a country of hippos. I find it incredibly unfair that the French continue to eat butter, cream and croissants and drink gallons of wine and their average weight doesn’t seem to change. They call it the ‘French gene’. It certainly insures that genetic engineering will get my vote.
I also feel that the ‘fattening’ of America is caused by an improvement in the taste of food. I don’t remember, as a child, food being so good that you didn’t stop eating it until it was gone. Don’t get me wrong. My mom was a pretty good cook but she was a non-working housewife, one of my favorite oxymorons, and in those days that meant you were lauded for taking the cheapest cut of meat you could find and making it edible. Only Italians had herb gardens, and you could only get vegetables in season, so even in New Jersey--The Garden State--that was pretty much June through September. The rest of the year we ate frozen or canned. My mother’s favorite flavor was butter. Everything I ate was drenched in it. So why was I such a skinny kid? She also liked to use sugar on fresh tomatoes and grapefruit and salt on green apples and melons. She baked every day. A meal on our table consisted of a relish tray (you remember--carrots, celery, olives and sometimes radishes or cottage cheese) or salad, meat, potatoes and gravy, at least two vegetables, bread and dessert. Dessert was usually pie or cake. We didn’t consider fresh fruit dessert like they do now. Unless it was in ice cream, of course. So how come we weren’t whales? I’ll tell you why. We ate a little bit of everything and let it go at that. We weren’t required to belong to the ‘clean plate club’, weren’t made to feel guilty because there were children that went to bed hungry, and weren’t interested in sitting in front of the TV all the time because we only had one and you can imagine the type of shows my father, who controlled the dial, liked to watch. (That was in the days when we children took the place of a remote. "Susie, put on channel 4.")
Another thing that the Food Police have become irate about is how much liquor we consume. In my parent’s day a cocktail or two or three a day was the norm. It gave dad a chance to unwind before dinner and mom a chance to tell him which child needed a talking to. Now it’s one glass of red wine a day for your heart, that’s it. Ha, Ha. I don’t know anyone who follows this rule. (It irks me that now that wine is good for your heart it gives me terminal GERD.)
I understand the concept of a ‘dry town’. I can appreciate that some people don’t want noisy bars in their neighborhood. What I don’t understand is the BYOB concept. These people want to control what is being drunk next door so they don’t allow liquor to be sold, but they okay the option of diners bringing coolers full of beer, wine and other potent potables to the local restaurants and for a few dollars corkage they can drink any or all of it. It seems to me that this takes all control of who drinks what out of the hands of the establishment. When selling liquor you can cut someone off when you perceive he or she has had too much to drink. If it’s the customer’s own liquor, bought and paid for, what can you do?
When did carbohydrates become the Pariahs of the food world? When I took health in school they were an important part of the food pyramid. I don’t think it’s fair that they bleached all the nutrients out of an entire genre of food to make it taste good then turn around and tell you it’s bad for you. I’m talking about white bread and pasta. The greatest comfort foods ever invented. They also turned the pyramid upside down and made the biggest part the broccoli and salad section. What’s with that?
As I was saying bread and pasta have become the wicked step sisters of eating. Now I can live without pasta (when did we stop calling it macaroni and spaghetti?) maybe six days a week but not bread. Bread, as you can tell from the description of what was on my family table, is a once per meal item. Toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and a roll or two with dinner. I don’t care if it’s made out of that hideous white flour, wheat flour or corn meal. As long as I can spread butter on it (of course we use unsalted for our health), I’m good to go.
My friend Jules and I went to a pretty fancy restaurant the other day. You know, ten dollar martinis and thirty to forty dollar entrees. After we ordered and got our cocktails Jules said, “I’m hungry. She must have forgotten to bring our bread.” The next time the waitress sailed by we caught her eye and asked about bread. “I’m sorry but it’s not our policy to serve bread.” Can you imagine? The chef must be an Atkins convert.
After cursing the person who recommended this place we enjoyed our entree and left. I said to Jules, “I guess this is a BYOB joint.”
“No,” he replied, “They serve liquor.”
“Yeah, I know. I meant Bring Your Own Bread.”