Augieland

The Whole Foods live lobster poppycock

So Whole Foods has banned the sale of live lobsters in its stores nationwide and PETA applauds this action. I know this because people are asking my opinion.

Here is my opinion: a stupid, simple case of a corporation trying to distract consumers from its shortcomings.

Here is my elaboration:

In general, I am of the opinion that food should be locally sourced and should be bought as locally as possible. For many ingredients, Whole Foods comes pretty early on my list of places to shop because I want to send the message with my spent food dollar that I would prefer more organic choices. But more than organic I would prefer food grown as close to me as possible, and if that is not possible I would rather keep my dollars in my community. I will go to Whole Foods for things not readily available at a local store, but only after checking. So it is far less than likely I was ever going to buy a lobster at Whole Foods (that's what the local fish guy is there for, so BFD).

The beauty of lobsters has always been:
1. They are pot caught so there is very little by-catch.
2. Being very low on the food chain, the PCB and Mercury concerns are much lower than other sea life popular with consumers at the moment.
3. They are fished by fisherman not farmed by corporations
4. They are purchased live, there are little processing concerns and even less freshness concerns.
5. Their cost to customers makes over-fishing prohibitive
6. They are why we know about good cholesterol.
7. They taste amazing, but only if they start live.

As for Whole Foods, they care about actual localness or quality of fish only in as much as they strive to be better rather than good, not the loftiest of ambitions. Just look at salmon. Although Whole Foods was one of the first to label farmed salmon as artificially colored, they did so only after the Times wrote the color wheel article. As far as pre-packaged smoked salmon, they offer about one wild-caught option for about every nine farmed. Although Whole Foods is very good at paying lip service to the belief in better choices and remains a far better choice than most super market options, it has clearly moved far away from its roots and at this point in its evolution seems to be doing more to arrest the progress of the organic and local movements than advance it.

All of these realities lead us to the reason Whole Foods has actually decided to stop selling lobsters at this point in time. Michael Pollan has written a book called "An Omnivore's Dilemma" that sheds light on the shortcomings of the realities of large scale organics, and since Whole Foods is as big as large-scale organic gets at the moment, they are the benchmark. Pollan simply points out things like how grass-finished beef from New Zealand, although better than corn-fed from Texas, may not be all that can be done by the industry leader to move us away from the horrible corn-based system prevalent at the moment.

Much like G.W. Bush pandering to his zealot base by suggesting a same-sex marriage amendment to distract from his needed house cleaning, Whole Foods is indulging its fanatic base by seeking PETA approval. In both cases, what is in order is addressing new issues that arise as the world changes and in both cases distraction is being used in order to maintain a status quo.

As far as PETA goes, I can't even begin to address their headline-seeking, donations-mongering, accomplish-nothing tactics. It is a bad organization that has constantly, for years, done nothing but hurt the cause of ethical treatment for animals. Their mission has seldom been more than to get fifteen year old girls to use words like lacto-ovo and nag their parents about the cruelty of gelatin in Jell-o. To these ends, they are constantly claiming insignificant victories like this.

No one buys lobster at Whole Foods really, unless there is a sale. Whole Foods has not chosen a higher ground. What has been accomplished is PETA has gotten air time on CNBC. PETA's petty and false victories are on easy to target luxury items, and in no way change the supply or demand for the items. As far as lobsters and foie gras go, these are both industries that support small sensible production with little environmental impact, the type to be embraced if what you care about is the health and welfare of all the animals on earth.

If the people at PETA actually cared about ethical treatment of animals, they would focus every single dollar and minute on the gross abuses that actually exist in the food world today. Like that corn is poisonous to cows, so much so that we need to fill them so full of antibiotics to keep them alive in spite of the poison diet we feed them that humans are developing antibiotic resistance as a result of consuming standard commercial beef. Through our unethical poisoning of cattle, we have created new sicknesses and the need to cook (pasteurize) our milk before we consume it. If PETA wanted to do the most good for the most animals, they would entirely focus their lobbying on ending government subsidies of corn. It causes far more problems for all life on earth than almost any thing other than fossil fuel dependence.

At best, PETA and Whole Foods have advanced the idea that lobsters have a central nervous system, equating them with earthworms. Pigs have such developed brains that the common industry practice of weaning them a few weeks early in order to get a head start on their hormone-laden fattening diet leaves them so distraught they develop an oral fixation that causes them to incessantly suck on each other's tails until they fall off, leaving sores that get infected. The pork industries solution? Cut the tails off (tail docking) at the time of the early weaning. But pay no attention to these grievous violations of ethical animal treatment, you can rest easy because PETA has convinced Whole Foods to stop selling the live version of what are essentially bugs.

Look, it ain't easy to know exactly what to do. I find it best to focus on getting the best, most tasty food available. I believe organic vegetables taste better than conventional, that wild salmon tastes better than farmed goes without saying. Although their legs are more sinewy, free range chickens have more flavor than Perdue, and grass-fed beef, although not quite as tender in many cases as corn-fed, has many more layers of flavor as well as six times the omega-3s of corn-fed beef.

My plan in reaction to this news? I suggest you try it. I am going to the Union Square Greenmarket to buy some grass-fed beef from Elk Trails Farm. Then, I'll stop at Flying Pigs Farms' stand and purchase some bacon to wrap around it. Once that is in the fridge, I'll call some local fishmongers to see who has the best price on live 1.5 pound lobsters and make Wife surf and turf for dinner.

Not lucky enough to have these options near you? Make a round of phone calls to your local purveyors and tell them you would be stopping in with money to spend if they did. They will get the message. By supporting small producers with better, more whole food, we have created such a network here in New York that I have many choices for all of the above. You can do the same.

The best burger: Barnacle Bill's

I love when New Yorkers argue about the greatest burger. It starts some awesome debate, and your answer tells much more about you than you think--especially if your vote is for something like the very good but nowhere-near-the-best Shack Burger at the Shake Shack (this says you like to consider yourself a foodie but actually are more interested in who the popular kids are). Some votes are for Corner Bistro (which I have always imagined started because a writer for one of the local magazines lived near it and somehow had never had the burger; it is a version of at one of its readily available incarnations at outlets near any body of water in the continental United States). Others dig on Burger Joint (I assume you know that this is the place on 57th street and not the pathetic little slider outlet on 3rd St. called The burger Joint,). For most burgers there is an opinion, which is what makes them so much fun to debate.

Before I rock all your worlds and tell you the best burger in the world is to be had in a small town called Rumson, NJ, at a bar called Barnacle Bill’s, rendering the best in New York a fruitless struggle (around here I am in the Burger Joint camp), I feel the need to set up some parameters for this debate:

1.      There are two kinds of burgers in the world: the fast food burger and the restaurant/bar burger.

2.       Anything that is not one of these is, of course, the greatest of its kind because it does not fit one of these two vast categories. (So don’t post comments about weck, and don’t offer the Kobe sliders at Stanton Social, or DB’s modern burger. Yes, they rock but they are a one-of-a-kind thing or a subcategory.)

If you haven’t tried the burger at In-N-Out Burger, I don’t think you get to vote on best fast food burger. If it is not the best, it is a benchmark. Fast food burgers are small, 2.5-5oz prepared within guidelines in the interest of efficiency and uniformity, served on buns and if you change an ingredient the burger changes name. Fast food burgers are served on trays and you go to them. But that is not what this post is about.

Bar/restaurant burgers are big, in the 8-12 oz range, are cooked to order, come on rolls, and are juicy (whether or not they got past your prescribed doneness when the short order guy got distracted from his duties). There will always be at least three cheese choices, it will be made of ground beef or chuck, is served on a plate, and comes to you.

If you look at the burgers people in NY seem to favor, they straddle these areas well and probably win polls because they draw votes from both camps.

As far as bar/restaurant burgers go, Barnacle’s has the best offering. If you order a burger you get a hand-formed 10oz beef patty on a roll with a dill pickle spear and some ruffled potato chips. The patty is grilled on what is basically a huge flat-top grill pan, with a flame heat source over the back third. The burgers end up with a nice black char, combined with the smokiness of fat that has fallen on something extremely hot and vaporized, then wafted back up to perfume itself. Most of all, it has been the same for the 20 years since I had my first.

The other thing that makes Barnacle’s burger superior is its simple condiment. It comes on what is called a hard roll in that part of the world. Basically a drier, darker, and taller version of a Kaiser roll with poppy seeds baked onto it; it has a crispy shell with a light, chewy simple white crumb. Onions can be had raw, sautéed or ringed, and it can also come with lettuce and tomato on request. You can get mozzarella, Swiss, American, bleu, or cheddar (a sauce). And that’s about it (if you wish you could get some jalapeños or sun-dried tomatoes you have such little respect for the burger and yourself I will ask you to stop reading at this point. I mean a burger is about the burger, not condiments, really, if you want to load stuff on a grilled sandwich, start with chicken. And if this is the first time that thought has occurred to you, then you like a bad place, poorly making burgers out of crappy meat, you nincompoop… this rant interrupted by the editor in the interest of sanity and flow AL)

On my last visit to Barnacle's, I was with Wife, who is very good about sharing. So, in the interest of variety I had a bacon cheddar burger and she had an American burger on an English muffin, and we split them. As horrible and boring as American cheese is in most cases, one of the places it plays well is on a well-made burger. Because of Bestman and his preference for this burger, it holds a place in the repertoire with the chips actually put on it. The bacon cheddar burger is the one I have been getting for twenty years. Originally I was sucked in by the way the burger's oily juices combined with the cheddar sauce's tanginess and the salty, smoky bacon. At this point I would say I get it about one out of every three times I go to Barnacle's out of familiarity.

I could go on and on about Barnacles Bill’s burger and presuppose all arguments, but I won’t. I will simply mention as a last point that while most of the rest of the menu at B Bill’s (predominantly fish dishes; get the steamers as an appetizer when you go) and all the other restaurants in the area have almost doubled in price since my first visit back in ‘83 or so, the burger stays in the very fair six-dollar range. You have to desperately try to get this burger to ten dollars. Even if you add everything you can to it, it stays a very sensible price.

I understand that people take this question very seriously and are sure I am wrong. To them I propose a fair forum for debate. I will happily join you to sample any contender, right after you try mine. I'll even do them in the same day if both are in the greater metro New York area. So far everyone that has had a vote has been forced to concede to this one. And heck, my pride can stand being wrong if it means finding a better burger.

Don't believe this idiocy

As a rule, I hate American nutritionists and blame the entire obesity/adult-onset diabetes epidemic in America completely on them and their idiocy. The reason I bring this up today is that on Thursday the Wall Street Journal ran a study saying that the Mediterranean diet may help people avoid Alzheimer’s.

It then goes on to explain this Mediterranean diet as follows. “The diet he tested includes eating lots of vegetables, legumes, fruits, cereals and fish, while limiting intake of meat and dairy products, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol and emphasizing monounsaturated fats, such as in olive oil, over saturated fats.”

Look, I am not saying this type of diet does not limit your likelihood of getting Alzheimer’s. I am sure these scientists did more than call a couple thousand people and ask them to describe the health level of their diet on a scale of one to ten. I am sure they took into account things like amount of hours potato chip eaters as opposed to carrot eaters spend in front of the TV instead of reading books. I am also sure they looked at factors like time spent outside walking in fresh air as opposed to driving in cars. And, most importantly, I am sure they factored in things like intellectual political discussion about topics like how asinine it is to do a dietary study of something inappropriately labeled a Mediterranean diet with friends over a glass of wine, as opposed to watching the evening news for 25 second sound-bites over a high fructose corn syrup-rich Coca Cola. Otherwise how would anyone lend any credibility to their hard scientific work?

What makes me insane is the claim that people in the Mediterranean areas have a diet that involves “limiting intake of meat and dairy products, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol and emphasizing monounsaturated fats, such as in olive oil, over saturated fats.” The truth is they are less likely to die of heart attack than us, in spite of the fact that this in no way describes their diet. Sure they eat more legumes, their governments are not busy subsidizing the development of frankencrops in grains over growing legumes, or funding asinine studies about dietary effects on Alzheimer’s rather than PCB consumption.

As for low dairy, the French consume about 42 pounds of cheese a year per capita while Americans consume about 20, and that is without splitting out what parts are natural as opposed to processed.

A diet low in meat intake? I love the Mediterranean and go often. Italians along the coast would literally stop existing if you took away their cured pork products.

And moderate alcohol consumption? The average wine consumption per capita in 2001 in France was 57.17 liters, in Spain it was 34.57, in Italy it was 52.92 in Croatia it was 43.20, in Greece it was 27.75 in Yugoslavia it was 13.11, in Slovenia it was 31.13, in Croatia it was 43.20, and in the US it was 8.77 (and I’m pretty sure I helped inflate that). Does this sound like moderation? Some of these countries on the Mediterranean consume almost seven times the wine we do.

Look, it is simply preposterous to call the diet that involves “limiting intake of meat and dairy products, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol and emphasizing monounsaturated fats, such as in olive oil, over saturated fats” a Mediterranean diet. The actual Mediterranean diet is loaded with all kinds of fats, animal, and vegetable. What it lacks is processed fats that were created by guys looking for an alternate to animal fats because idiots like Nikoloas Scarmeas and his group at the Columbia Medical Center in New York test things thing like the diet he tested.

You want to do a good experiment? Walk to a local Mediterranean place (please say you know I mean local not franchise; you are not allowed to do this experiment at Olive Garden or Romano’s), have a glass of lightly acidic wine with a huge plate of home-cured pig with its fat. Then do a round of vegetables grilled, roasted, or marinated in kinds of olive oil. Next, have a glass of nice, medium-bodied red with a small amount of pasta that has cheese and meat in it (and maybe even a touch of cream). Follow this with a small amount of protein with its fat – say a duck breast or a pan-fried veal cutlet – with a glass of some big red. Finish this all up with a couple of pieces of cheese and some fruit compote, then walk home. See if you don’t feel a little smarter.

Corkage

Corkage is a thing my opinions are very varied on, so I have been saving writing it up. But I'm seeing a new trend in NY restaurants at the moment that I see as so absurd I feel it needs addressing. Places that do not offer wine are charging for corkage which is ridiculous and, if we are learning anything from the saga of the East Village's European Union opening, probably criminal.

In a nutshell, corkage is the fee restaurants charge to serve you your own wine. The fee is justified as covering the costs of glassware and the staff to support the service of wine and the charge is understandable, because places make money on their wine and a certain amount of any restaurant with a liquor license's business model would be a certain amount of earnings from beverage service.

The few, simple guidelines I believe apply to bringing your own wine to a restaurant, are:

1. The wine should be something the restaurant does not offer. If they sell what you want there, you should buy it from them.
2. The wine should be unique from their offerings. Don't bring Ornellia to a place that sells Sassicaia. Even though they are indeed different, they are not unique enough to justify supplying your own.
3. Your wine should be significantly better than what they are offering. Or at least as good. The chef should not be expected to make food that will go well with a wine not on par with the caliber his place offers.
4. The most that any place should charge for corkage is the cost of the cheapest bottle of wine on their list. Half of that would be fairer, since they are losing no product in the exchange.
5. It is their place and thusly their policy is to be followed, no reason to argue. If you are bringing wine to a restaurant, you should call ahead of time and find out their corkage policy, not show up with wine in a scuba bag and argue about the house's rules.

Now, being a guy without a lot of depth in his wine cellar, at this point I am not faced with wanting to have so and so cook for me while I drink my prized bottle of such and such, which is the occasion I can imagine my wanting to bring a bottle to a place for.

At this point, I mostly still consider the wine program an intricate part of a restaurant's philosophy and judge their choices in offerings, as well as pricing and service, to be telling as to where their really heart lies.

As for this new, recurring practice of places charging a corkage fee while awaiting their liquor license -- screw that and screw them. When going to a new place, call and ask if they have a liquor license. If the don't, ask if they allow you to BYOW (no longer a safe assumption). If the answer is no, and then yes, ask if they have a corkage policy. If they charge you for serving you your wine when they have not gone through the costs of putting together a wine list, paying someone to maintain it, applying for and securing the proper licenses, and insuring the place against possible liquor-inspired law suits, they don't have the right to expect profit from the sale. If things are as they should be and there is no charge for corkage, buy their most expensive bottle of water and help keep them going on the right track.

Monster's Margarita, or the only one worth drinking

During one of my many sojourns into the restaurant business, I pretended to be a bartender at a rather upscale restaurant. My immediate overseer was Monster. Monster was journeyman wine guy/bartender with roots all the way back to the Zuni Café. In my few short weeks under Monster's tutelage, I learned the glory that can be a Margarita.

To say I did not have any appreciation for a Margarita before Monster showed me the Zuni Café version would be a lie. I grew up on the Jersey shore and, as I have learned is pretty common throughout America, the easiest place to use a fake ID back in high school was the local cantina, so I was pretty much weaned on pitchers of frozen margaritas that were at least 70% sour mix.

As I mature, I tend to prefer drier drinks, and the margaritas in a fish bowl, out of a slushie machine, and other versions served at most restaurants, are predominantly comprised of sweet crap (be it Rose's lime juice, simple syrup, sour mix, or the bartender's secret touch of OJ or Grand Marnier). So, before meeting Monster I had just decided Margaritas weren't my thing.

When Monster first asked me to make a Margarita, I did so as had been done for me thousands of times, as I believed it should be. I juiced half a lime and added a shot of simple syrup, since we didn't have sour mix (we were a fancy place after all). Then I poured a healthy dose of Tequila in a shaker, with a less healthy pour of Cointreau, shook it and poured it into a chilled up-glass with a salted rim.

Monster corrected this into a recipe I now not only make for friends but very much enjoy out, especially as spring springs. Like most genius things, it is simple and it is balanced between sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Juice half a lime (a whole one if it is a drier lime) and pour a serious amount of your favorite 100% agave tequila, (the cheap kind, good tequila is for sipping) and a splash of Cointreau into a shaker full of ice. Close the shaker and shake the heck out of it, seriously as hard as you can for as long as 30 seconds. You will know you have done it right when your fingers get lightly stuck to the metal cup. Then, either pour this over fresh ice or into a chilled up-glass rimmed with kosher salt.

You should use Cointreau for the splash, the tequila has to be 100% agave, and you absolutely positively must use freshly squeezed lime juice. Monster likes up, I like rocks, either way as the weather warms this is a great cocktail. Don't let the fact that most are mediocre keep you from loving a classic drink.

Annie's Naturals Ketchup

I'm not going to go crazy on this one, I just think that the ubiquitousness of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the prepared foods available to Americans is a perfect example of the government doing pretty much the opposite of their job. In the interest of keeping a couple of major corporations profitable, our government subsidizes corn to such a point of market oversaturation that they have had to come up with uses for it. So, besides being the subject of misguided plans to make it fuel, it is in all (ok most) of our processed food.

As a result of my feelings, I pretty much reject not only brands but many products. I will either do without or make my own. The problem has gotten so out of hand that in many cases there seem to be no good substitutes. Take ketchup, for example.

There are many ketchups available in the market that contain sugar as opposed to high fructose corn syrup (for an awesome, homemade one get the burger at Savoy) but, as a rule, they take themselves too seriously and end up tasting like a tomato-based sauce plus some other flavor. Consequently, I had replaced the ketchup for my fries with things like hot sauce, until we found Annie's Naturals ketchup on Fresh Direct.  It's great -- a little sour, a little sweet, a little garlicky, a little oniony, just like regular ketchup, except maybe a little better from its use of real sugar as opposed to HFCS. I strongly suggest trying it. Strike back at a ridiculous farm subsidy system, as well as adult onset diabetes and the rampant overweight problem, just by switching to this or some other non HFCS ketchup.

Treatment for the common cold

Seasons change. Sometimes when they do I get sick. It happened this year; Monday afternoon I was stricken with a chest cold and fever. The worst part of it was over by Thursday morning. Like all New Yorkers, I have my stand by cure-all that I go to and suggest you try as well.

Back in my freelance days, when staying in bed to heal rather than going to work was not an option, this was suggested to me by an old experienced pro. It has served me well, not so much as a cure as a way to keep myself moving through a cold that would otherwise have been debilitating.

The first ingredient is a quart of Hot and Sour soup from the cheapest Chinese restaurant in your neighborhood. Really cheap, the storefront with an high counter made of Formica about 8 feet from the glass door. There should be one table snugged up against the wall farthest from the door. The table should have one ok chair, one uncomfortable chair, and one piece of furniture hardly discernable as a chair except for the bright brass-toned screw that used to hold the front left corner of the textured red vinyl pad to the frame that now just gouges the outside of your thigh while you precariously try to balance on the three remaining points of contact.

This table should only be used for waiting by the people who have walked in without calling in their order ahead, although if you get sick often enough you will probably have seen one person eating at it at least once. Most likely, what they will have been having is the fried chicken special which has been cleavered into eight pieces where there are usually four and is somehow served with fries for about $5.45, even in this day and age.

Another clear identifier that you are in the right place to procure your primary cure ingredient is the 2-foot square, backlit, bright yellow sign with garishly colored pictures of select menu items, like beef and broccoli, fried dumplings and General Tso's chicken. The perfect place will only be wide enough for about 6-8 of these signs over the counter horizontally but in strip malls, usually close to bowling alleys, I have seen stores big enough to hold about 12 across.

If these signs have many pieces of masking tape layered over the prices in enough different colors of marker that you can still tell through minimal visual excavation that at some point the sweet and sour shrimp was something like X.35 even though now it is X.95, all the better.

If all these indicators exist and you are still not convinced, you can rest assured if the menu is a white piece of paper bigger then anything you have ever seen in Kinko's, with about 250 items on the front printed in red and black with a serial number at the top that corresponds to a perforated section at the bottom. This will be stapled to the top of your brown bag when you leave and the remaining larger portion of the broad sheet will be handed to you with circles around every word you said while at the counter.

Once you've found your place, the next step is easy. Order a large Hot and Sour soup extra hot. It doesn't really matter if they think you mean picante or calliente. If they repeat "extra hot" when you order, you will end up with the right thing. Take this home stapled safely in its bag (if you don't have a bottle of Nyquil, pick one up on the way, it has to be the green one), put on your pajamas and turn down the covers on your bed. Once that is done, drink the broth of your Hot and Sour soup. Drink from the edge of its container. Do so as fast as you can, not so fast that you get the hiccups, but efficiently. There is no reason to eat the solids. Once you have taken all the broth in, take two large gulps of the Nyquil (throw the shot glass out, your proper dose depends on your ability to choke the green monster down from the bottle). Now immediately get in bed, under the covers, and wait for the Nyquil to knock you out.

When you awake you will be aware that you sweat while you slept, and you will be much more able to face the day ahead.

Wait but I can buy cigarettes?

This is a letter I am sending around to local and state politicians. If you are of a similar mind please feel free to do the same.

To get you started, here's the link to Pataki's comment section (I will be adding more names shortly):

http://161.11.3.75/govemail

Please enter the requested info and cut and paste this into the comments section (changing the signature to your own). For other politicians please

1. Cut and paste it to your own email.

2. Change "Governor Pataki" to the politicians name.

3. Change the signature to your name and address.

4. Send it all over the world and make food a little better.

Dear Governor Pataki:

For all the benefits of living in New York City, there some exchanges we make in order to coexist in a place with such a concentration of people. I think foremost among them would be how many of us live without cars or even easy access to a car. Because almost everything you could ever want is findable in one of the five boroughs this is seldom a big dilemma. However, the current state of laws and policies regarding raw milk in New York State have created a special situation that I think our legislators need to address.

Currently it is only legal to purchase raw whole milk and its products in New York from licensed farmers on their farms. Although I am sure this works fine for people outside the city, it essentially keeps most of us that live here from being able to procure these products. Because of this special situation, I propose enlarging the scope of the law that allows licensed farms to sell raw milk on their farm to include their stands at our established farmers' markets.

Because many New Yorkers cannot get to farms to buy produce, a system of very strong farmers' markets exists. Greenmarket, a program of the Council on the Environment of NYC, works in conjunction with the Mayor's office of New York and maintains a very efficient system for regional farmers to get their wares to those of us who would not otherwise be able to get to the farms.

Were the law to see these established stands as an extension of the farm and allow the licensed farmers to sell their raw milk legally within city limits we would no longer be deprived this legal right by situation.

The truth is the laws and policies of the United States and the State of New York are creating circumstances in which the largest percentage of milk available to the public is a hollow shell of the nutritious product it once was. These laws are born of a laziness inherent to American policy that says, "milk is dangerous if improperly handled and people motivated by apathy and profit will inevitably mishandle it, therefore better to strip it of nutrition and taste than insure that producers do their job." This all should be addressed going forward and will be when the current state of affairs gets in the larger public conscience.

At this point, there is a group of small, local farmers, properly producing milk. By making it possible for them to sell to those of us in the city who want to buy, you would be encouraging the local economy, encouraging the more healthful methods of farming lost on the factory farms currently producing the milk available to us, and expand one of the few areas local farmers have that is actually making them some money. I see expanding the current raw milk policies to include farmers' market sales as a simple change that is win win all around. I very much hope you will take the time to look at it and see how much this simple little change could improve the quality of life of many of your constituents.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Augieland

a helpful map with links to your State Senators: http://www.senate.state.ny.us/Senatorbio.nsf/Public_NYCMap?openform

No whole milk in school? You nincompoops.

New York City schools have decided to stop offering whole milk to students. When will people finally see that bureaucracy and food do not belong together? Without getting insane about the many completely stupid and self-serving half-truths bureaucrats have turned into policy on food, like those regarding mishandling of raw milk and beef preparation.  Things like: cooking the flavor (some say helpful microbes) out of the milk by pasteurizing it, and spraying the freshly butchered carcasses of animals with bleach.  The truth is if people responsible for these decisions had any understanding about food and its benefits, their policies would involve insuring the handlers of our food did so in safe manners, rather than rashly deciding to sterilize the good, the bad, and the flavor out of our food supply.

Taking as a given that those who decide food policies are inept reactionaries who have, without fail, followed trends and made decisions based on simplicity over quality, those of us who care have found ways around their idiocy. But this decision by New York schools is potentially dangerous to children and that is unacceptable.

I will not get involved in the arguments for drinking whole milk they are well made here. Or the fact that raw whole milk, properly handled, is probably the healthiest thing humans can consume (because Ron Schmid does a great job of it in his book and, to be honest, I drink it because it tastes better, not because I believe it has medicinal powers). The dilemma of this recent decision is that it shows a complete miscomprehension of the issues facing America's youth today.

I assume the impetus for this decision is the improvement of health of the children (to be against being fat is an aesthetic choice, there are plenty of people out there who like being large and like others that are large, so for a school board to decide being fatter is bad would be horrible and would border on eugenics.) I think it is safe to assume they have made this new policy believing it will aid in the fight against type two diabetes and coronary issues later in life.

There is good evidence that Americans are getting fatter, and fatter Americans are suffering from ill health as a result of their weight. There is, however, no direct provable relationship between animal fats and ill health. To the contrary, as Americans have cut back on consumption of animal fats, they weigh more and more every year. I will let dieticians argue that as America reacted to the idea that animal fats were bad, the food industry replaced animal fat with vegetable fat and empty sugar calories, and we are now finally realizing things like people who substitute artificial sweeteners and "low-fat" fillers are fatter then those who don't.

I think people who try to stay informed rather than gleaning their health info from TV commercials and the side of a Snackwell's box all agree at this point that two things are responsible for America's fat issue: one being the departments of American government advising an out-of-balance diet that favors grains and carbohydrates, and the other the ubiquitous-ness of high fructose corn syrup in packaged food.

Ok, so the New York school system is basing a very poor decision on old dietary theory that most everyone who actually studies health gave up on about ten years ago, things like this happen all the time. So why am I so up in arms about this one, this time? Because the real problem with America's diet is sugars and, in the interest of saving 20 calories, this new policy keeps low-fat chocolate milk available while removing whole milk. The result is that, in the interest of saving less then 1% of a grown human's suggested diet, children are being trained to prefer artificially sweet food.

The most immediate dietary dilemma facing Americans is the amount of processed sugar in their diets and the New York School system is encouraging sweet over wholesome in the interest of saving twenty calories.

The truth is, if you want healthier kids, encourage them to eat a balanced diet of comprised of the least processed food possible and take them out for a run. Obsessing on fat has made us fat. Obsessing on sugar has created artificial sweeteners that at there best are negligibly carcinogenic at their worst make you dumb. According to the numbers of schools that have enacted these policies milk drinking is down across the board, and no drink can be more important to a developing child then milk. To accept people drinking less because it will take 20 calories out of a developing child's diet only leaves us with brittle children who crave sweet beverages, and that is a horrible education.

Babbo: 2 menus 2 times

I had one of these menus in November 1999, and the other in January 2006. For one of them I paid the premium for the reserve wines. Other than that, I'd like to let them speak for themselves. I am very interested in your comments