Food police want fun off the menu at NYC restaurants
Say goodbye to foie gras, lobsters — and steer clear of Dunkin’s Boston Kreme doughnut while you’re at it.
The gustatory pleasure police — oops, sorry, nutritional and environmental “scientists” — are back to waging war on our favorite foods.
These intermittent, nanny-state campaigns to ban or scare us off almost everything worth eating now aim both high and low.
The latest strike against sanity? An outlandish proposal by City Council Majority Leader Keith Powers (D-Manhattan), egged on by so-called “health advocates,” to make places like McDonald’s and Burger King “warn” customers about sugar content.
Did the city council magically solve the rest of New York’s problems and not tell us?
Also, did Powers and pals ever stop to think that people go to these places because they like sugar? Maybe it’s a bad choice, but it’s their choice.
Breaking news: The average New Yorker lining up at Dunkin’ in the morning is no more likely to sweat over how much sucrose is packed into a double-chocolate doughnut than they do over labels indicating calorie counts and salt content — which the Bloomberg administration forced on chain eateries more than a decade ago.
What’s more, sugar stats would further clog up already sprawling, confusing menus and make them even harder to navigate. By the way, have you noticed how many customers study the calorie and salt warnings on their Big Macs closely? Duh, like, none.
At the luxury end of things, the luscious liver known as foie gras will likely soon be a memory in New York City, despite a temporary court stay this week of a City Council-mandated November ban.
This supposed anti-cruelty legislation is aimed at sparing the poor ducks and geese from force-feeding.
It might seem unkind to animal-rights zealots who are unaware that the creatures don’t really seem to mind. They get to live, after all!
Millions of pigs, chickens and cows are merely hung upside down, shocked and beaten before they are offed. Why not ban pork, fowl and beef, too?
Conde Nast-owned Epicurious, which calls itself “the ultimate food resource for the home cook” — and appeals to the culinarily correct Park Slope crowd — got a jump on the woke herd; the website stopped posting new beef recipes two years ago.
Meanwhile, the foie gras ban would put 400 upstate farm workers out of jobs. But, hey, tough turkey! What’s a little more unemployment, when the feelings of animal-rights activists stand to be hurt?
Don’t laugh, but lobsters could be next: The Monterey, California-based Seafood Watch lobby’s whale enthusiasts are urging Americans to stop eating Maine lobsters, because the nets and pots used to catch them can entangle the mammoth North Atlantic mammals known as right whales.
This would be just what New York City’s struggling restaurant industry needs, no?
In fact, the right whale population is falling for many reasons, including climate change and ship collisions. The situation needs to be viewed in the context of global declines of all whale species, something that has been going on for more than a century.
The nosh nudges have already made the once-enjoyable experience of eating out seem as risky as a thrill ride that might crash while you’re on it. Menus advise pregnant women not to drink, per the surgeon general, as if they needed to be reminded. Ubiquitous footnotes warn us that “consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness.”
Considering the supposedly grave threat to human health, it’s miraculous that our hospitals are not overflowing with people who have eaten sushi, rare steaks and raw eggs.
The food scolds would do us all a favor to just eat at home, keep their paranoia to themselves and let the rest of us enjoy our — guilt-free! — meals in peace.
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