AFS Cinema
'Chronicle' Food Writers Should Follow My Agenda!
RECEIVED Wed., Aug. 1, 2007
Editor,
The reply to my letter [“Postmarks,” July 20] concerning Virginia Wood's glowing review of Lap-Band surgery ["Enough Is Enough," Food, July 13] missed the point entirely.
Wood is your chief food writer but almost never mentions the concept of nutrition. Isn't that why we eat food? Instead, she treats food as entertainment and judges it weekly almost entirely on taste, not on its merits in contributing to a healthy life.
Food is meant to keep one alive and healthy; only by abusing food does one become obese. Even then, any restaurant critic should have the common sense to exercise regularly to offset the job's built-in dangers. Many food critics are quite fit indeed.
That Wood is not is her own choice; she starts the article by saying she has an "aversion to exercise,” as if that lets her off the hook. If that isn't lazy, what is? She then wholeheartedly recommends surgery as a wise alternative to living and eating intelligently. No wonder health care costs so much; the modern desire to have medicine replace self-control makes it so.
This was my issue with the article. Wood may be the sweetest woman on the planet, but I address her as the chief food critic for a popular, "progressive" publication. That role carries a responsibility to go beyond the mere sensuality of food and to explore how food fits into and creates our culture and bodies and thoughts.
Wood does a good job of mentioning farmers' markets and local chefs but could do so much more, including discussing how the money we spend on food impacts our lives in so many ways.
Massive, dangerous pollution of our water and air is caused by the factory farming used by agribusiness in the USA. Pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and manure by the millions of tons fill our rivers every year. Our topsoil is disappearing along with our water tables. A small amount of research by vital food writers such as Vandana Shiva, John Jeavons, Frances Lappe, and many more will show that if we stopped supporting mega-agri-biz, we could make a huge difference in our environment, health, and thinking.
That the Chronicle would rather extol yet another barbecue joint using chemical-laden meat than discuss the health, environmental, and political consequences of our food-dollar choices is consistent with Wood's self-imposed health problems.
A food writer should be healthy by definition.
The reply to my letter [“Postmarks,” July 20] concerning Virginia Wood's glowing review of Lap-Band surgery ["Enough Is Enough," Food, July 13] missed the point entirely.
Wood is your chief food writer but almost never mentions the concept of nutrition. Isn't that why we eat food? Instead, she treats food as entertainment and judges it weekly almost entirely on taste, not on its merits in contributing to a healthy life.
Food is meant to keep one alive and healthy; only by abusing food does one become obese. Even then, any restaurant critic should have the common sense to exercise regularly to offset the job's built-in dangers. Many food critics are quite fit indeed.
That Wood is not is her own choice; she starts the article by saying she has an "aversion to exercise,” as if that lets her off the hook. If that isn't lazy, what is? She then wholeheartedly recommends surgery as a wise alternative to living and eating intelligently. No wonder health care costs so much; the modern desire to have medicine replace self-control makes it so.
This was my issue with the article. Wood may be the sweetest woman on the planet, but I address her as the chief food critic for a popular, "progressive" publication. That role carries a responsibility to go beyond the mere sensuality of food and to explore how food fits into and creates our culture and bodies and thoughts.
Wood does a good job of mentioning farmers' markets and local chefs but could do so much more, including discussing how the money we spend on food impacts our lives in so many ways.
Massive, dangerous pollution of our water and air is caused by the factory farming used by agribusiness in the USA. Pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and manure by the millions of tons fill our rivers every year. Our topsoil is disappearing along with our water tables. A small amount of research by vital food writers such as Vandana Shiva, John Jeavons, Frances Lappe, and many more will show that if we stopped supporting mega-agri-biz, we could make a huge difference in our environment, health, and thinking.
That the Chronicle would rather extol yet another barbecue joint using chemical-laden meat than discuss the health, environmental, and political consequences of our food-dollar choices is consistent with Wood's self-imposed health problems.
A food writer should be healthy by definition.
Kyle Swanson