While I take no issue with improving the food in schools, I do take issue with the political correctness and arrogance of the entire “slow food” movement. I wrote back in March that the school lunch program in Berkeley that is being held up as a national model was projecting a $250,000 deficit this year and that the champion of the program, Alice Waters, was not planning on contributing any more money to the program because she wants the parents of the school kids to foot the bill. The Berkeley school board had been subsidizing the program and had considered cutting that subsidy to save money, but at the last minute decided to continue the program for one more year hoping that they can convince enough parents to pay into it, and at the same time raise the prices to help make up the debt. "I wish more of our families would make a commitment to (eating the hot lunches)," said district Superintendent William Huyett during the school board meeting. "We're asking for 25 cents more and we know it's hard times, but what we feed our children is important."
And what are they feeding the children of Berkeley? Whole chickens, hormone and antibiotic free hamburgers and hot dogs, California-grown organic rice and beans, fruit from local farmers, whole grain bread, and so on. In other words, politically correct food. Food that is not produced by a large agri-business corporation. Food that you often see at those slow food festivals that Slow Food USA, Slow Food Nation, and other organizations like them put on.
One such festival was recently held here in beautiful Oakland. The organizers of this festival, Eat Real, wanted to stage a more affordable slow food festival than the $60 a plate haughty events that Slow Food Nation holds in San Francisco and other places. Admission was free and the food prices were around $5 a plate. Sounds great, right? Well, here is a partial list of vendors who participated at Eat Real: barbecue, wood-fired pizza (utilizing local ingredients), crème brulee, Southern soul food, Mexican food, microbrewed beer, and ice cream. Now, if the goal is to have people, especially kids, eat healthier food then I for one wonder about the choice of vendors. I happen to know the barbecue vendors personally and while their tri-tip and pulled pork sandwiches are absolutely delicious it is not exactly healthy. I swear I can sometimes feel my arteries hardening while I am enjoying their meat. While it is debatable how much of the food served at Eat Real was in fact healthy (not just the BBQ, everything), there was one thing we can all be sure of, none was produced or sponsored by large food corporations.
I think that is the real target of these slow fooders, evil fast food corporations like McDonald’s and KFC and evil agri-business like Archer Daniels Midland, and like the social conservatives that want to ban rap music, Playboy, and Internet soft porn sites, they are using children as a totem to convince everybody else to do what they want. There is this push for lunch programs like in Berkeley, an incessant cry to remove soda machines from school campuses, and the occasional local bill calling for a ban on fast food restaurants, as if these alone are making kids fat, lazy, and stupid. How about the video games? Or the schools that have cut PE? Or most importantly the parents who are not supervising their children’s eating and playing habits? These people seem to think that the cure for all of our social ills, including escalating health care costs and failing kids, is to put Burger King, Coca-Cola, and their brethren out of business and force everyone to eat whole grain bread and free range chicken.
Look, I am not trying to argue that people won’t get sick and die if they eat Taco Bell every day. I’m trying to argue that this is supposed to be a free country and we should have the right to choose if we want to eat whole grain bread or a Chalupa Supreme, and we should identify arrogant do-gooders like Slow Food Nation as the politically correct police that they really are. If you want to eat organic tofu that’s fine with me, as long as you don’t get in my grill and tell me how stupid I am for not doing the same.
Continuing my theme of tying in 70’s TV personalities with the subject of my rants, I’d like to close with a brief shout-out to culinary student Jack Tripper. While Jack was a master of the culinary arts and given how skinny he was probably ate a healthy diet, you never heard him lecture Janet, Chrissy, Cindy, Terri, Larry, the Ropers, or even Mr. Farley about the food that they ate. No, Jack was a live and let live kind of guy, which was all the rage back in 1978 but seems to have all but disappeared from our society now.
Now this is what I need, a female version of this guy who can cook dinner for me in less than 22 minutes (including commercials of course) and do so with a smile on his face and without a lecture.
My goodness, 2 posts in 2 days. As you may have guessed I have been saving up...
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