Who Says....

New York City is all hot dog stands. Fruit stands are all around the city in springtime.


Having a soy cappuccino, $3.75, at Macaron Cafe while flipping through their French magazine collection can't be considered an educational outing in my studies of the language?


You should be fraught with worry over the state of your thighs, stomach, or other part of your body if you will be pool-side, lake-side, or beach-side in a month or two.

When have you EVER heard a man utter, "Sorry, I can't eat that cookie. Swimsuit season is almost here, you know!" I've heard the dreaded swimsuit comment three times in one week from women.


You can't be a vegetarian or vegan and still adore food films like Babette's Feast, Julie & Julia and the woman herself, Julia Child. My Life in France was with me all over Italy. I found her enthusiasm for life contagious, and her love story with Paul endearing. How many romances survive that long?

I could so relate in Julie & Julia when Julia (a la Meryl Streep) declared, "All I think about all day is food and then I dream about it all night."


You can't support Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, just because he is not promoting veganism or vegetarianism. I've been disappointed at the animal rights community's utter silence about this show, and their refusal to acknowledge his ground-breaking shows on factory farmed chickens and pigs in the UK.

I think of Natalie Merchant's observation in her Leave Your Sleep liner notes about the "timeless truth that we fail to understand the entirety of anything because of our limited perspective." Many vegans only seem to want to hear or discuss people promoting vegan only. That's a mistake, in my opinion.

We need a massive shift in our food culture, and Jamie Oliver promotes many of the same ideals. More organics. More local food. More cooking from scratch as often as possible. For many, learning how to cook. Revamping a broken school food system. Improving brown bagged lunches. I couldn't agree more when he said in his closing show that if parents fed children the junk he witnessed every day, it's child abuse.

"You can have anything that you want in food, but just in moderation," he assures us. Moderation is one of my favorite words. I tire of the food police declaring you shouldn't have any sugar, white pasta, and such ever. He's not saying that either.

Sign Jamie's petition, which simply declares, "I support the Food Revolution. America's kids need better food at school and better health prospects. We need to keep cooking skills alive."