In the news

I didn't cook dinner today (thank you, Academic Journal Club, for furnishing pizza with your glioma talk), so instead I'll write about one interesting cooking-related and one interesting food- and health-related article in the New York Times today:

Well, properly speaking, this is a preview of an article coming out on Sunday (I don't like how they preview some of their biggest Sunday articles, by the way. It ruins the excitement of reading the complete magazine on Sundays! Hold off until then to read the previewed articles, you say? Sorry, too curious, or perhaps too compulsive.), written by Michael Pollan of In Defense of Food fame. I wish it were easier to eat the way those "dinner party" guests ate, not in terms of the oh-so-rustic wood-burning oven and amazing quantities of incredible food, but in terms of locally produced proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids consumed with more joy than environmental repercussion.

And then we have this article on a Bloomberg proposal that would no longer allow food stamps to be used to purchase soft drinks, along with certain other classes of sugary drink. My real objection to this is that Bloomberg says that a two-year test ban would be enough to provide data for a trustworthy study on the ban's effects; I disagree for several reasons. But other than that, have at it, people! This is much less the government "telling you what you can eat," as one commenter asserts, than banning trans fats in New York City restaurants; one can feel free to buy soda by the barrel if one wants, but not on the government's dime. Even if this does not significantly depress soft drink consumption in the targeted population--which I certainly hope it does--it will at least free up more money to be spend on, who knows, possibly more healthful food. As someone pointed out in the journal club, it's amusing that the more conservative on the political spectrum who are more likely to indignantly invoke "personal liberty" in opposition to restricting food stamp spending options are also more likely to be opposed to food stamps in the first place.