I spend a lot of time reading books written by people who really, REALLY, like to eat.  Lately I’ve been listening to Tony Bourdain, American chef and author of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly and A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal, as he traipses around the globe eating the most extraordinary assortment of what once slipped, slithered, slid, or flew straight into the hands of his hosts.  You think that’s gross?  In defense of his diet, and with tremendous concern about what now passes as acceptable fare in America, he says:

“Do I overstate the case?  Go to Wisconsin, spend an hour in an airport or a food court in the Midwest.  Watch the pale, doughy masses of pasty-faced, pringle-fattened, morbidly obese teenagers bulked up on cheese that contains no cheese, chips fried in oil that isn’t really oil, overcooked grey disks of what might once upon a time have been meat.  These are the end products of the masterminds of safety and ethics?  Then tell me I’m worried about nothin’. 

A steady diet of ho-hos and muffins, butterless popcorn, sugarless soda, flavorless lite beer.  A docile uncomprehending herd led slowly to a dumb, lingering, and joyless slaughter.”

I’m not the only one who’s noticed that there is something terribly wrong going on out there.  That’s Tony Bourdain, with his unique commentary on the monstrous consequences of eating a diet that consists largely of manufactured calories.  Very difficult to ignore.  Go, Tony!
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