According to Dowd, Barack employs a trainer, preached the importance of breakfast to the black community, and once, at a fancy restaurant, ate just one french fry. Michelle, meanwhile, invited kids yesterday to the White House vegetable garden, and helped them prepare their own baked (not fried) chicken. Yet both Obamas have been spotted at burger joint Five Guys, where evil grease soaks through the bag and into the arteries. What gives?

To her credit, Dowd recognizes that Obama may be "treat[ing] himself to fries and burgers to beef up his average-Joe image." And nutrition professor Parke Wilde tells Politico's Erika Lovely, "The pressure for politicians to eat like the common guy is part of the human condition. Eating with someone means connecting by sharing their kind of food. You can't refuse to participate in the way most people eat." Clearly, as with Michelle's cooking efforts (or non-efforts), the challenge is to set an example for Americans without alienating them.

But is this really so hard? White House chef Sam Kass says, "We try not to do diets, as opposed to just change our lifestyle. A diet means you're inherently going to fall off of it." And Lovely writes,

If the Obamas have a diet secret, it is that they've achieved the elusive "balanced" lifestyle - a concept that has been preached for years by health secretaries, doctors and even the fast-food, candy and beverage industries.

A balanced lifestyle — which, for the Obamas includes exercise, vegetables, and the occasional burger or cheese platter — doesn't have to be elusive. The reason it seems so may have to do with the false dichotomy people tend to set up between healthy and unhealthy behavior. Lovely quotes one culprit, anti-obesity activist MeMe Roth, who views sundae toppings the way most moms the crystal meth (while she's on good behavior here, saying merely that Obama "has to come across as health conscious, not a foodie," she once compared eating junk food to rape). Maureen Dowd comes off as an absolutist too, writing, "the president should forgo the photo-op of the grease-stained bovine bag and take the TV stars out for what he really wants and America really needs: some steamed fish with a side of snap peas." And on the other side, we have people like Jeffrey Stier of the American Council on Science and Health, who says that if the government keep promoting organic, local food with their vegetable garden,

People are going to eat fewer fruits and vegetables. Cancer rates will go up. Obesity rates will go up. I think if we decide to eat only locally grown food, we're going to have a lot of starvation.

As people and as a nation, we're caught between those who say that any deviation from steamed fish is going to give us a heart attack, and opponents who argue that healthy food is elitist and we'd better stick with a steady diet of donuts and pesticides unless we want to die of starvobesity. But what the Obamas demonstrate is that it really isn't a contradiction to eat baked chicken and cheeseburgers, and that occasional grease can be part of a healthy diet. It's smart that the Obamas don't make burgers into Roth-style forbidden foods — this demonizing attitude might just make Sasha and Malia crave them more. And while the Obamas can afford whatever organic food they want, and a trainer to keep them fit, it's also true that a vegetable garden like Michelle's could be a money saver for people with the space and time to grow one. The recession, says Gardener's Supply Co., has caused a spike in interest in home gardening. Obviously not everyone can plant a garden, and not everyone can eat like the Obamas. But their "balanced lifestyle" is a lot more attainable than people like Stier would have us believe — and a lot healthier than Dowd implies.

Hold the Fries [New York Times]
President Obama's Diet: Fitness And French Fries [Politico]
Industry Is Critical Of Michelle Obama's Organic Garden [Politico]

Earlier: Should Michelle Obama Get Back In The Kitchen?
Michelle Obama's Garden Continues To Sprout Criticism

The premise of the article is that Alice Waters, the Queen of Green and the earth mother of the food revolution, is experiencing an unfair backlash. But, says Namkung, she doesn't deserve it, because the good she's done outweighs any sanctimony.

The hard words comes as a result of Waters' recent appearance on 60 Minutes, in which her passion for organics for all brought tears to her eyes. She's been vocal, lately, too, in her support of an organic garden at the White House - calls which have been heeded. In response, apparently Anthony Bourdain said, in an interview with DCist,

Alice Waters annoys the living s%#* out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic. I mean I'm not crazy about our obsession with corn or ethanol and all that, but I'm a little uncomfortable with legislating good eating habits.

In response, NPR (et tu, NPR?!) critic Todd Kliman was emboldened to denounce Waters' movement as somewhat intransigent: "Waters, like a lot of radicals, believes the movement will never end. She simply can't see that the revolution she helped lead has calcified into something doctrinaire and even repressive, not liberating and uplifting." The only other critic I could find (by searching "Alic Waters, smug" and "Alice Waters, annoying"), a food blogger, explained his aversion thusly: "I've been unsympathetic to Alice Waters in the past, if only for her California sanctimony, and the effortless, tendentious ease with which she conflates her own fame with the cause of sustainable food."

While this hardly constitutes a full-scale denunciation - Bourdain's in the business of stirring the pot with iconoclastic fervor, after all - it's also true that such criticism would have been unthinkable a few years ago. To criticize Alice Waters, after all, is tantamount to criticizing puppies; what's not to like about organic food, small farms, good nutrition for children? As Victoria Namkun avers, the food revolution would not have happened without Waters. And the increasing availability of affordable organics can be laid directly at her door. The charge brought against her is generally an oblivious elitism that displays a lack of knowledge of the real priorities and opportunities of everyday people. And it's true both that Waters lives in a mecca of the movement she spawned and that her acolytes are not, as a rule, impoverished: to the extent that "good eating" has acquired the taint of moral superiority, the movement is indeed problematic. But can Waters be blamed for this?

In a sense, Waters seems to be falling prey to the pitfalls of any radical who is around long enough. She's damned for a single-minded commitment that now seems simplistic; at the same time she's criticized for an elitist complacency. On the one hand, some of the criticism is surely contrarian, pure and simple: Waters is one of the few sacred cows we have left to us (an organic one, to be sure), and as one with a particularly earnest and rabid fan base, probably an irresistible target for troublemakers. There are those amongst us who can't tolerate the existence of bedroom saints, and maybe they're right. I'd regard Waters' recent challenging not as problematic but as necessary and important; even a sign of her importance. She created a movement, and like a culinary Dorothy Day, she's stayed true to its principles. This is, perhaps, as it should be, and what she should be revered for; it's also what needs to be challenged, discussed, analyzed, evolved, rethought if necessary. What's the point of founding a philosophy if it doesn't spawn new ideas? So where Namkung says "give Waters a break"; I say she can take it.

Let's Give Alice Waters a Break [Huffington Post]
Alice Waters Was a Foodie Hero. Now She's the Food Police. [NPR]
Alice Waters Finds Someone Even More Annoying in Lesley Stahl [The Feedbag]
Chewing the Fat: No Reservations' Anthony Bourdain [DCist]

First the bad news: a recent study found that being just seven pounds overweight increased men's risk of heart failure — by about 11 percent over 20 years. Being obese increased the risk by about 180 percent. The silver lining: exercising just one to three times a month lowered the risk by 18 percent.

More silver lining, sorta: Jane Brody at the Times lists a bunch of diet books that she promises won't require you to starve yourself or adopt stupid gimmicks. Some sound okay: "The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories" tells you to eat a bigger volume of foods that aren't calorie-dense, while "The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep It Off" teaches that the eating impulses that helped us as cavemen don't work in the modern world. But then there's "The Beck Diet Solution" and "The Beck Diet Weight Loss Workbook," which purport to teach the overweight "to think like a thin person." Which is okay if that thin person is, say, Barack Obama — but not if it's Amy Winehouse.

Shockingly, being smart may not be what keeps thin people so svelte — they may have social advantages. A study of rural Americans revealed that "obese participants tended to have less education and lower annual incomes than normal weight respondents. They also were more likely to view their community as unpleasant for physical activity, such as lacking sidewalks for walking or biking or to have few places to be active." One of the study authors says that "a lot of travel planning focuses on how to increase the numbers of automobiles on our roadways, not on how to make travel friendly by foot or bicycle," and that we should think about preventing obesity when we're planning communities. ""Everyone will benefit," he writes, "if we make the healthy choice the easy choice."

Being just seven pounds overweight can raise the risk of heart failure [Daily Mail]
Weight-Loss Guides Without Gimmicks [NYT]
Eating At Buffets Plus Not Exercising Equals Obesity In Rural America [Science Daily]

Target Women: Feeding Your F—-ing Family [Current]
Earlier: Brides, Botox & Yogurt: Sarah Haskins Targets Those Who Target Women

Well, judging from passages in the lawsuit, which mostly go like this:

(d) Both the Book and the Infringing Work explain that the author is not a professional chef, just a mother who desres to have peace at the dinner table and to feed her children nutritious food. Both works discuss how the author overcame the guilt of tricking her kids into eating healthy good.

• The Book states that "this method has brought peace to our family table," that "[i]n many families, the dinner table becomes a battleground and meal time is a power struggle," and that "I couldn't use logic, but I couldn't afford to give up either."
  
• The Infringing Work states: "I just wanted a little peace around the dinner table," and continues, "I want my kids to associate food and mealtimes with happiness and conversations, not power struggles and strife." The Infringing Work acknowledges, "[W]e just want to give up."

I'm more upset that she is, you know, angry and hysterical, and because she's a three-name woman, which is what concerns me. She has thre names. And you know, if you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins...Mark David Chapman. And you know, James Earl Ray. So, that's my concern.

Seinfeld, Wife Sued Over Cookbook Controversy [Smoking Gun]
Earlier: Jessicas Are All Pretty Bitches
Jessica Seinfeld's I Never Read That Book" Defense Smells A Little Fishy
Jessica Seinfeld's "Deceptively Delicious": Kinda Deceptive, Not So Delicious

Martha, meanwhile, is sure to get the last laugh, because while Ray is clearly focused at present on solidfying her standing in print, Martha has moved on to conquering the Internet. Stewart is set to launch a site called Martha's Circle (which so sounds like a gang, right?) [Or a place to go and sew? — Ed], which will be a network of blogs on all things Martha-ish. In other words, many possible topics! The woman is capable of discussing potting soil, Hermes handbags, baby lions at the zoo, and how to create the perfect dry spice rub — all in the course of a single episode on her TV show. And eventually, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia execs have suggested, Martha's presence on the Internet will evolve into a "MySpace-like social network for women." Just as we suspected, Martha shall soon rule the world! So maybe Rachael Ray stole a staffer. Martha rules the world.

Ray Raids Martha [NYP]
MSLO Draws Martha's Circle Blog, Lifestyle Site Network [MediaWeek]

Well, if you do care, she did go on record for the Times to talk about this eight-year old story, where she basically said that "she did not leave Mr. Nederlander for the comedian. Her first marriage was irreparably broken, she said, before she met Mr. Seinfeld. She said that she and Mr. Nederlander had been having problems even before their wedding on June 13, 1998 — they were in couples therapy, she says — but she lacked the courage to leave him. Within two days of returning to New York from her honeymoon in early July, however, she began moving possessions from Mr. Nederlander's apartment to her grandmother's in Manhattan... On Aug. 7, Ms. Sklar was at the Reebok gym on the Upper West Side, wearing headphones and filling a water bottle, when she first met Mr. Seinfeld, she recalled." And yet the Times points out that "Ms. Seinfeld's account contradicts the unfolding of events as described in the news media at the time — namely, that she left her husband for the comedian — and which her own statements seemed to confirm." And they sorta get Jessica Seinfeld to 'fess up! She says to their questioning, "[W]hen columnists first asked about Jerry and me, overwhelmed and under tremendous pressure, I compounded the mistake. I denied the truth, naïvely trying to protect everyone involved, including Eric, from the pain of the break-up and from the embarrassment of public humiliation." Thanks, New York Times. We will certainly sleep better tonight now knowing about what two people say about their own marriage.

How I Met Jerry Seinfeld, Scene 1, Take 2 [NYT]

Earlier:
Jessica Seinfeld Continues To Deceive, This Time For "Charity"
Jessica Seinfeld's "I Never Read That Book" Defense Smells A Little Fishy
Jessica Seinfeld: The New James Frey? Or Kaavya Viswanathan?
Barter Wives
Jessica Seinfeld's 'Deceptively Delicious': Kinda Deceptive, Not So Delicious

Although Ms. Lapine also (rightfully) questions Oprah Winfrey's wholesale endorsement of Ms. Seinfeld's book — "I'm surprised that on the Oprah show this was being touted as an entirely new technique pioneered by Ms. Seinfeld" — why isn't she (or anyone else, for that matter) questioning Seinfeld's excuse that she has never "seen or read this other book"? Sure, maybe she never literally held it in her well-manicured hands, but as every author or agent of nonfiction knows, before you prepare a proposal to present to editors, you research the marketplace to see if the concept has been executed before, and if so, how. It's called "Competing Titles", and it's part of Nonfiction Publishing 101, up there with "Write A Sample Chapter" and "Describe Your Intended Audience". And if there is a competing title that sounds a lot like yours? At the very least, you take look at it. Maybe you even acknowledge it! Also, are we to believe that, following her epicurean epiphany, Ms. Seinfeld never typed in the words "puree" "kids" and "eating" and "food" into Google? Or that once she signed with hot young literary agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, the importance of researching competing titles was never brought up? Yeah, it's about as believable a scenario as a filthy rich, fashion-obsessed, oft-photographed socialite who does all of her family's cooking.

Cookbook Author Says Seinfeld Book Deceptively Similar [USA Today]
Earlier: Jessica Seinfeld: The New James Frey? Or Kaavya Viswanathan?
Related: Jessica Seinfeld's Recipes Stir Up Plagiarism Accusations

We were wary when we first saw Jessica "Mrs. Jerry" Seinfeld on Oprah last week, heralding the benefits of steaming and pureeing the shit out of vegetables and then "hiding" them in kid-friendly foods so that kids will stop throwing temper tantrums at the dinner table and actually eat their vegetables. Because if you steam and puree the shit out of a vegetable, does it have any nutritious value left in it? Especially when it's hidden in a brownie? We turned to Sarah Sliwa, a graduate student at Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and all-around sassy chick, to help us unravel Seinfeld's "deception" and its potential for any and all deliciousness.

Picky eating is not unusual. Food jags — children's desire to eat only a few types of food — often set in around age two and can continue until a child is four or five. For this reason, experts recommend that parents introduce, and reintroduce and reintroduce, as many foods as possible when children are young, so that when the jags set in, odds are higher that children will fixate on at least some of the foods that parents want to be serving, which is why Seinfeld's approach of sneaking veggies into brownies doesn't sound quite right. Green, broccoli-coated chicken nuggets don't help kids like broccoli. They help kids eat green nuggets. This is exactly the point raised in a recent New York Times article about picky eaters.

Making healthier versions of popular foods isn't a bad idea. Substituting homemade foods for fast foods is appealing when the recipe is quick, involves few ingredients, and tastes good. But cooking vegetables to puree them in order to trick kids is less convenient. And there's something even more troublesome about using dessert, a meal accessory, as a vehicle for vegetables, a diet staple. If this is the point, Seinfeld's brownies are a Yugo at best: the half-cup of spinach and half-cup of carrots required for the recipe amount to a whopping 1/12 of a cup of vegetables per serving. When the recipe was analyzed using NutriCalc 2.0 it appears that each brownie yields 156 calories, 57% of which came from carbohydrates, 9% from protein, and 34% from fat. This is lower in fat and calories than a traditional brownie, but higher in both than most methods of preparing carrots or spinach. But does it taste like a brownie?

I had every intention of becoming an informed hater and make these terrifying brownies in the comfort of my own kitchen, but found myself without the time or energy to cook and puree. And I don't even have kids. God bless Oprah fans for having the time to roast, puree, bake, watch Oprah and post the results of their experiments in delicious deception on Oprah's website:

My 4yrold said the Brownies tasted like Dirt!

Brownies were awful... My family spit them out.

My brother (31) took one bite and practically gagged.

There is NO WAY these are the same brownies Oprah was eating on the show

The book's official website boasts that "Deceptively Delicious is a godsend for all parents who want healthy kids, peaceful family meals, and never again having to say, 'Eat your vegetables!'" Actually, the best way to get kids to hate beets is to keep telling them to eat them. I'm Polish. I heart beets. Beets are good. In soup. In a salad. With some goat cheese. Just keep them out of my cake.