"FoodPolicing" news and stories

The life of a golden beet isn't really a very glamorous one. We don't get out very much, we tend to be a bit grubby and we've got this embarrassing dry skin problem.

So imagine how surprised I was to find out that I've somehow become a symbol of everything that's wrong with food these days; according to this funny lady Carla Spartos, I'm nothing less than a nightstick in the hands of the food police, the so-called "Gourmonsters" who are trying to bully us all into eating our vegetables and threatening to steal our Ho Hos.

While I appreciate the shout-out -- it's nice to know that Alice Waters wants to dress me up in a fancy vinaigrette -- I've got to say that all of the attention seems a little misplaced.

Read why after the jump.

Shhh! Be quiet, or they'll find us.

I'm typing this from under the kitchen sink in my triple-bolted Brooklyn apartment where I'm cowering in fear of Chef Alice Waters. If the New York Post's Carla Spartos and the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd are to be believed, the founding Slow Foodista and her hench-polemicist Michael Pollan are hell-bent upon mugging every last McNugget-lovin' American of their free will, hard-earned cash and bags of pre-shredded iceberg lettuce.

It's my fault. I didn't speak up the first time they came and forced me, at Shun-point, to trek to Dan Barber's Blue Hill Farm and choke down sun-warmed, newly picked cherry tomatoes that tasted of summer and promise and the few times my grandfather was kind to me.

I remained silent when they dragged me hemp-bound to the Union Square Greenmarket to spend several dollars less than I would at my local C-Town grocery store to meet the folks who got their hands dirty growing ridiculously delicious heirloom peppers, beans and squash with more Earth-friendly farming practices. And I cried hot, sloppy tears when they pointed and laughed at my insufficiently grained bagel. See, according to Spartos' recent N.Y. Post editorial "Gourmonsters," Officer Waters and her ilk are out to shame us all.

"They're the food police and their patron saints -- Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, chief among them -- are on a crusade to tell you not just what you should eat, but how you should eat it.

Like an exclusive clique of anorexic cheerleaders, they think they're better than you."

Silly me.