Online Editor, Saveur.com
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| Word of Mouth |
Children went back to school last week, but adults were the ones having food fights. In Britain, celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson Wright , formerly of the BBC show ?Two Fat Ladies,? squared off with fellow cook Jamie Oliver, claiming she would avoid his food at the risk of ?being poisoned." The almond growers of California
claimed their future success would be jeopardized by a year-old rule requiring them to pasteurize their products. They filed suit against the U.S. Agriculture Department, charging that the law puts their product at a severe disadvantage in a market where the words ?organic? and ?raw? reign supreme.
Food was politicized in Myanmar after it was reported that detained democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to accept her daily food rations for three weeks. Under house arrest for 19 years, the popularly elected leader receives no other source of nourishment. Residents of war-ravished Darfur might soon find themselves in a similar predicament after the UN announced it will be forced to suspend food aid that feeds three million people a month in the region if attacks on humanitarian convoys persist. And politics might become a thing of the past for Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej who was ordered out of office after judges ruled that he violated the constitution by appearing as a paid guest on a TV cooking show.
It's also the end of an era for one of Hawaii's last remaining sugar plantations, Gay & Robinson, which is ending production after 119 years in business due to the rising costs of sugar operations.
Vermont Governor Jim Douglas is championing a new beginning for 30,000 needy families by extending the state?s Food Stamp eligibility requirements to include them. And in Iowa, an all-you-can-eat corn eating contest also got a fresh start after the University of Iowa lifted a ban put in place last year claiming the contest promoted gluttony.
Los Angelenos, or at least the California Assembly, continued to fret about the city?s growing obesity problem this week, prompting a bill that would require large chain restaurants throughout the city to display nutritional information on their menus.
And America?s affection for food paternalism extended across the pond last week when the British Government unveiled a plan that requires schoolchildren to take a mandatory cooking class
?in effect, writing the phrase ?food fight? into the curriculum.
But not everyone was bickering last week. The Detroit Free Press reported that some people still live by the principle that the true way to someone?s heart is through the stomach.?Caitlin Drexler |
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