Turkey Police, Beware
By: Richard Berman
Newspaper: The Washington Times
Food police cut more than calories by whacking feast foods. Somewhere in America, a family will eat a Thanksgiving dinner the food police would be proud of. Warm aromas of mashed tofu with fresh, creamy canola oil, baked yams with just a pinch of salt-free substitute on them, boiled onions and soy-bread stuffing with low-sodium vegetable broth gravy fill the house with an air of "excitement." Everyone waits for the piece de resistance - and out it comes! A steaming, gleaming "tofurky" (tofu molded into a turkey), complete with fermented soy drumsticks and "wishstix" made from tofurky jerky.
By: Richard Berman
Newspaper: The Washington Times
Food police cut more than calories by whacking feast foods. Somewhere in America, a family will eat a Thanksgiving dinner the food police would be proud of. Warm aromas of mashed tofu with fresh, creamy canola oil, baked yams with just a pinch of salt-free substitute on them, boiled onions and soy-bread stuffing with low-sodium vegetable broth gravy fill the house with an air of "excitement." Everyone waits for the piece de resistance - and out it comes! A steaming, gleaming "tofurky" (tofu molded into a turkey), complete with fermented soy drumsticks and "wishstix" made from tofurky jerky.
In an effort to change American eating habits to conform to their puritanical vision, groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Vegetarian Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are perverting the way Americans look at food. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in their attacks on our feast foods, those meals we eat only on special occasions. Every year the talking heads appear on the air to demonize holiday fare as unholy bastions of what CSPI calls "food porn." The weeks before Thanksgiving host the now-traditional parade of health scares, "tips," pranks and even outright terrorism as nanny state activists jostle for the media's attention.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving uses Thanksgiving to move almost seamlessly from its "101 Deadly Days of Summer" (Memorial Day to Labor Day) to its "Tie One On" (Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve) campaign. Both are intended to scare us away from even responsible drinking. As MADD's former president Karolyn Nunnallee says, "we will not tolerate drinking and driving - period." So much for any holiday cheer for those not sleeping over.
On the food front, a widely reported study - claimed that just one fatty meal could induce a heart attack. (That'd sure put a damper on the giblet gravy.) Less reported was that the study surveyed only 18 men - hardly a significant medical development! That same week, other "scientists" released overblown warnings about malonaldehyde in turkey, arsenic in mashed potatoes, and aflatoxins in walnuts. Such arguments stretch believability - according to the American Council on Science and Health, one must eat 3.8 tons of turkey to develop cancer from malonaldehyde. A legion of chipmunks couldn't eat enough nuts to give one of them cancer.
The science and the public interest group CSPI does its part for the holidays with its annual press conference warning us that "consumers need to treat every turkey as though it harbors a feast of bacteria." The group goes so far as to campaign against stuffing turkeys, for fear of salmonella or food poisoning. Isn't that why we cook our turkeys? PETA and radical vegetarians go further, protesting everything from barbecue to the Easter ham to (again) that icon of American food, the Thanksgiving turkey. Calling the holiday "murder on turkeys," PETA suggests we eat "tofurky" instead.
More sinister are the antics of the Animal Avengers, which in 1996 created a scare in Vancouver, Canada, by saying the group had laced turkeys with rat poison. Another group, the Animal Rights Militia, pulled the same trick in 1994. Such relentless attacks have done more than just cut calories from our dinner plate. Thanksgiving and the winter holidays are a time for family, reunions, friends and for literally giving thanks for what we have. Food, drink, and yes, even smoking, is often part of this experience. On an even deeper level, feast foods help define who we are as an individual, as a family and as a regional or ethnic group. "There are all kinds of signposts on people's Thanksgiving table that give away who they are," New York Times food editor Ruth Reichl said.
Author Irene Chalmers, whose book "Food!" discusses the social, psychological and emotional aspects of special meals, goes further: "The construction of the meal at holidays is a way of holding hands with past and future generations." Disrupt that, she says, and the link is broken.
The incessant (and usually bogus) health scares that emasculate our beloved family recipes do just that. They scour away the joy of cooking grandmother's stuffing or Aunt Mae's yams with brown sugar and molasses. "We are a society obsessed with the harmful effects of eating," said University of Pennsylvania Professor Paul Rozin.
Such an unhealthy obsession makes that tofurky l ok almost palatable - at least it's "safe," so the logic goes. Few of us still go over the river and through the woods for a Thanksgiving at grandma's house. But all of us have warm memories of feasts gone by. And after the meal, the hours of conversation - punctuated by coffee or brandy - bind the day up into a sensation that hangs with us, sometimes forever. But those memories are being replaced by anguish over naked statistics, animal rights and cancer scares. And that's not a lot to be thankful for.
— Rick Berman is the executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a coalition of more than 30,000 restaurant and tavern operators working together to preserve the right to offer guests a full menu of dining and entertainment choices.
