For years, nay, decades, public health scolds have tried and tried to politely inform the American people that drinking gallon upon gallon of Fanta cola in lieu of water could have negative health effects, including but not limited to the fact that we as a nation are now enormous. But! Now, public health advocates have learned to tap into that most primal fear of Americans: fear of exercise.
What's wrong with you, America? While you leer at "hoochie mamas" on VH1 and use "sext messages" on your "crackberries," a very real international crisis is being ignored across the ocean: Norway is running out of butter.
When Chick-fil-A isn't spending millions trying to clog the channels of gay rights legislation as effectively as their grease-soaked poultry mittens clog human arteries, the Atlanta-based restaurant chain expends its energy in equally productive ways. Case in point: Their current attempts at preventing Bo Muller-Moore, a Vermont folk artist, from selling silkscreened T-shirts bearing the words "Eat More Kale" on them.
Even though New York First Mistress Sandra Lee is forever partial to Halloween—if you don't know why, do yourself a favor and click here to find out—she still made time to visit tonight's Late Night and prepare a Thanksgiving meal with Jimmy Fallon. And by "Thanksgiving meal," I mean "a gross-looking Bailey's martini and some cornbread stuffing with a can of Campbell's chicken rice soup in it," among other monstrosities. Aunt Sandy, God love her.
In olden times, when Americans were forced to scavenge for food at "Supermarkets," people ate only three "meals" per day, that being the maximum number that the womenfolk could be goaded into preparing, no matter how much you beat them.
Some variety of factory-farmed meat product: it's "what's for dinner"—for the wealthy! Americans, who, on the whole, are not wealthy, are eating less meat these days, due to both high prices and the fact that edible meat products are hard to come by while dumpster diving. Big Meat companies are posting their earnings this week, and it's not looking good, according to the WSJ. They're being squeezed on all sides, like a pig in a crate.
The school lunch wars are still raging in Washington, as Big Food continues its multimillion dollar lobbying campaign to prevent the USDA's new rules surrounding school lunch nutrition from going into effect. The potato industry is doing an excellent job, so far, eliminating any limits on the weekly number of starch servings (read: sodium-soaked french fries and tater tots). But that's still not as ludicrous as the new rule that the frozen pizza industry is working to stop.
Fast food is a luxury these days. Fast food chains can no longer just set up a plastic lean-to on the side of any major highway and expect Americans to flock in for 99-cent anus burgers; now, they have to convince impoverished Americans that their "Val-U Men-U" items were prepared by a real live chef.
The bigwigs at KFC recently discovered a long-lost manuscript by Colonel Sanders, the highest-ranking military man in the fast food universe. It's his life story stitched together with his favorite recipes for things like pies, casseroles, sauces, and just about everything else. And it's going to be available for free on the internet!
Celebrity chef Mario Batali indelicately compared "the entire banking industry" to "Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys" at a Time panel on Tuesday. A poor choice of metaphor, for sure—especially when you consider that bankers make up a significant portion of the customer base at Batali's high-end New York restaurants. Even more so when you consider what crybabies bankers are.
Here's a delicious template for peace in the Middle East: Coney Island Bialys and Bagels — at 91, the oldest bialy shop in New York City — was on the brink of shutting down after the founder's grandson had called it quits. But the bialys will live on, thanks to two Muslim businessmen harboring a deep fondness for the ways of the shmear.
The New York Post—the fascist barrel-scraping newspaper with its finger placed closest to the vibrant pulse of young, "hip" Brooklynites—has unearthed a new, hip trend, which is occurring among hipsters—in Brooklyn, of course. The hip, fashionmongering young people are diving into dumpsters to extract food, completely without care for the inherent wackiness of such a stunt, their eyes focused on only on nutrition—and hipness. Who ever heard of such a thing?
For once in its life, science has done something actually useful, and taught us all a valuable lesson: strawberries can help protect your stomach (an essential organ) from alcohol (an essential coping mechanism).
Wait! Before you pour maple syrup on your evening pancake stack: Are you sure that's real maple syrup and not some poisonous impostor? A Vermont senator wants to make selling fake syrup a felony, punishable by hard prison time.
