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04/19/2005 Archived Entry: "Food-guide pryamid replaced -- Who the hell should care?"

OUR GLORIOUS LEADERS, DISPENSERS OF ALL WISDOM have replaced the food-guide pyramid (again) -- this time with a whole series of interactive pyramids and online forms to help you customize your own diet.

To introduce this newest Wisdom of Wisdom (which replaces the old Wisdom of Wisdom, which stood as Eternal Truth for 10 years or so), the USDA chose a person named Denise Austin, an alleged fitness guru, to stand up next to the Cabinet Secretary of the Week and bounce around and Get Everybody All Excited About Eating Right.

I've never heard of this Austin person, though I'm guessing she's familiar to All Those Good Folks Out There in TV Land. I hope I never have the misfortune to hear of her again. In the NPR clip linked above, she sounds as if she's promoting good nutrition to infants not yet mature enough to be trusted to watch the Cookie Monster. She makes Chirpy the Cheerleader sound like a Nobel laureate. If she were sitting beside you on a train, you'd get up and move as far away as you could -- and she's the kind of person who'd follow you to your new seat, brimming with so much hyper-aggressive good cheer you'd think it was great fun to vomit on her shoes.

Actually, the new food guide sounds thousands of times more sensible than the old one, which makes you wonder why they had to hire Alvin-the-Chipmunk-on-laughing-gas to promote it.

But of course, there's nothing sensible about a government that presumes to tell us all how to eat. Where did these people ever get the notion that our nutrition is a function of the national government?

At least they haven't -- yet! -- authorized random checkpoints to make sure we're eating right ("right" according to this week's Wisdom of Wisdom, that is). At least they haven't -- yet! -- started sending SWAT teams into our homes at night on the word of informants who tell them we might be in possession of the Dreaded Fats and Sugars. ("Refined carbohydrates in the third degree, Your Honor.") ("The shooting was justified. Deppity Fife saw the perp reach for her Crisco.")

Just wait'll next year.

Posted by Claire @ 11:54 AM CST
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