While a lot of people are eating organic, Greene's stunt it noteworthy for its length and thoroughness, eating only organic food — defined as that produced without pesticides, antibiotics or hormones — both at home and in restaurants. "He chose three years as a goal because that was the amount of time it took to have a breeding animal certified organic by the Department of Agriculture. While food growers comply with organic regulations every day, Dr. Greene wondered whether a person could meet the same standards." Obviously, this was pricey — organic food can cost up to twice as much as what Whole Foods parlance terms "conventional," no laughing matter in these straitened times. (He found that cutting down on meat helped equalize the costs.) Then too, even in Dr. Greene's relatively health-conscious neck of the woods (where he was able to join a CSA and shop numerous farmers markets), organic chow could be hard to come by at, say, truck stops. Quoth the good doctor, “It was much more challenging than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be tough. There were definitely days where there was nothing I could find that was organic.” He'd call ahead to make sure restaurants could ensure that no non-organic morsel passed his lips; his family was into it.

Greene's rationale was that "his findings offer new insight into the challenges facing the organic food industry and those of us who want to patronize it." He also hoped it would improve his own health which, anecdotally it has (the scientific verdict is still out on whether organic foods are healthier, with arguments for both sides.)

Three years later, he says he has more energy and wakes up earlier. As a pediatrician regularly exposed to sick children, he was accustomed to several illnesses a year. Now, he says, he is rarely ill. His urine is a brighter yellow, a sign that he is ingesting more vitamins and nutrients.

While the experiment is a laudable one — and, in fairness, predates a lot of the food-related stunt journalism that's glutted the marketplace in recent years, and certainly the recent economic downturn — the rigid and stunt-like nature of it feels slightly arbitrary. It's certainly Dr. Greene's prerogative, and since he has the time and means to do so, more power to him: it's doubtless good to know the practical limitations of theory. It is always encouraging, too, to see a doctor practicing what he preaches. That said, the application is beyond the reach of most everyone, and as such, experiments such as these are feeling increasingly academic.

For Three Years, Every Bite Organic [New York Times]

Radice knows of what she speaks: in her house, she's the everyday cook, but her husband is the chef. "For he believes that only men can be truly great cooks. And though he is not a misogynist in real life, he certainly is in the kitchen." Of course, (beyond the question of whether selective chauvinism is a viable concept) in some ways, we should all have such troubles - there are certainly worse things than having a partner who handles the stress of dinner parties - and ironically, these ancient prejudices can have a liberating effect. Radice mentions Nigella Lawson's assertion that "Freedom from kitchen servitude is recent enough for women to flaunt their undomesticity – just as women of an older generation often refused to learn to type or learn shorthand."

However, to the extend this chauvinism plays out in the larger world, quite obviously it's problematic: women chefs tend to be qualified just that way - as "women chefs" - and even when this is treated as a positive, there's a certain tweeness to it, a sense that women bring an earth-mother serenity and sensitivity to the cooking process that's distinct from traditional chefs' militaristic mastery. The machismo of the professional kitchen is legendary, and generally women who survive there are regarded as unusually tough or preternaturally serene. Radice quotes Michelin-starred chef "Clare Smyth, "I could never say I'm tired, or I'm sick, or I've cut my finger, as the response would be, 'It's because you're a girl.'" Certainly, women in the kitchen are regarded as the exception - there's been just one female Top Chef winner, for instance, which was considered a Big Deal - and Gordon Ramsay (not known for his sensitivity in any realm), and who, it should be said, doesn't seem to have a problem putting women executive chefs in his kitchens) is quoted in the piece as saying, "Women can't cook to save their lives."

The woman as nurturer, men as performer stereotype, of course, is not all bad - certainly as cuisine has evolved from the purely technical to the more straightforward and connected (a movement spawned in large part by women, chiefly Alice Waters) the issue has become more nuanced. And it can't be denied that men and women, in civilian cooking, do often take different approaches - many men I've known in the kitchen are more engaged by complicated recipes and esoteric cooking challenges than the primal pleasure of feeding and nurturing people. Whether, however, this is societally-grounded is hard to say. (I should say that as cooking has ceased to be a need and has become a status-y hobby, I've also known plenty of women who only dabble in showy cooking, too.) The classic idea of a "chef "is masculine by reductive definition: a man's role in a man's world. I like to think the definition of the term is softening and changing, rather than that women are being forced into a circumscribed and outdated mold. Like ballet, cooking's a rigid and time-honored discipline. However, unlike dance it's forced to change with our habits and tastes. As such, hope that "cook" is not the pejorative chefs like Point would have made it, but rather something altogether new : still rooted in the realities of feeding rather than the show of dining - less regimented, less patriarchal, sure, than the purely masculine "chef," but ultimately not lacking in precision, skill or status. Although, apparently the author's husband has yet to get that memo.

Help - my husband thinks he's a superchef! [Independent]

[Image via Bravo]

We know from the AP (via the Times) that Obama dislikes beets — “I always avoid eating them.” And everyone, after all, has specific peeves. However, while Obama let it be known that he has “a weakness for chips and salsa and tends to put hot sauce on everything," and there are scores of obligatory campaign pix of him chowing down cross-country, according to Newsweek's special post-election issue, in reality he's "abstemious" to the point of asceticism:

Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15)...Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys.

Michelle, by contrast, seems to enjoy food, preferring, according to an appearance on Paula Deen's Food Party (where they cooked fried shrimp), to exercise to stay in shape. She reminiscences about cooking gumbo for Barack, and as we all know from The View, she enjoys bacon. This is, of course, wildly speculative. It's merely prudent to watch what one eats on the campaign trail where opportunities for exercise are rare; and, for all we know, Michelle actually counts every calorie. More to the point, it has nothing to do with Obama's ability to govern — if anything, such self-restraint augurs well. So why does the information that he's so careful about what he eats bother me? Am I projecting? Uh, yes.

I love to cook and as an omnivore, it's been my misfortune to be cursed with a succession of picky romantic partners. My college boyfriend, while a food-lover by nature, was fanatically preoccupied with his weight, indulging in bouts of extreme abstemiousness and self-flagellation that took much of the pleasure from cooking and eating together. And my fiancé has a list of Don'ts so long — from imagined allergies (beef, fruit) to prejudices (peas, canned tuna, cucumbers, celery rye bread, cottage cheese, California dip) to expensive dogmas (he won't touch non-organic dairy or eggs or go anywhere that might use MSG) that meal-planning is a minefield. Perhaps worst of all, he refuses to eat the 5/$1 pork dumplings sold in Chinatown, one of the only things offsetting New York City's rents. I regard this as a major moral failing.

From what Newsweek says, I have a bad feeling President-Elect Obama would get those dumplings to go and then toss them, rather than slathering them with the obligatory mixture of soy sauce, hot sauce and sugar and living off of them for the next month. I can know that perhaps this is a good thing for the country, but still feel the first pin-prick of reality intruding on my fantasy, perhaps not even conscious, of the president as a compendium of arbitrary virtues — just as other people will have theirs. Besides, let she who is without sins cast the first stones. When, earlier today, I mentioned what a turnoff male pickiness is, my fiancé retorted, "you know what else is a turnoff? Garlic vaginas." Touché, sir. Touché.

Obama’s Red Scare [New York Times]
The Long Siege [Newsweek]
Promo Video Of Michelle Obama On Paula Deen's "Food Party" [YouTube]
The Obama's Are Bacon People!* Michelle Obama [YouTube]

While traditional gestures like serving ladies first, giving the guy the check and letting women have the banquette seat (courtly or paternalistic?) are far less prevalent than they were — to the confusion of servers everywhere — certain distinctions apparently still apply. Well, obviously: I mean, in an industry where success can hinge on the width of a napkin ring, no one's gonna blow off the divides in a customer base's priorities, expectations and tastes.“Women are looking for somewhere comfortable,” says Mario Batali. “Men are looking for somewhere to show off.”

Now that the old rules don't apply so much anymore — no smart restauranteur is going to assume a woman can't handle a wine list — and some of the gender gap has been closed by fads like the gender-neutral low-carb trend or equal-op annoying foodie-ism, the more fundamental divides between the eatin' sexes are apparently becoming manifest. Since we all love being told about ourselves by groups of strangers, here's the breakdown!

We sit in banquettes: Even though it's no longer the protocol — like any guys still know that rule, anyway — apparently women gravitate towards the seats that give the best view of the room/potential assassins.
We Need Warm Rooms: We apparently "tend to dress with more skin showing" so the thermostat's got to be up.
We Like Healthy Food: "Women more often ask if a menu has leaner, healthier options. Men more often ask if they can get a decent steak."
We Don't Like Crappy Places: "A woman is more likely to take offense if the restrooms are cramped, ugly and messy. "
We Do Like Awesome Places: "She’s also more likely to appreciate color and playfulness in a restaurant’s design, while there’s more risk that a man will be cool to that." Apparently this one mint-green restaurant with a seafood-heavy menu was attracting such a disproportionately female crowd that the owner redid it to make it more gender neutral. “There’s more meat now — a Niman Ranch pork chop, veal breast, a lamb T-bone,” and it's been repainted cream.
We Like Meat But We Like To Be Tricked Into It: "Stephen Starr, who owns Buddakan and Morimoto, said that women more often hesitate if the name or look of a dish is too blunt a reminder that they’re biting into an animal. 'If it’s something that says chorizo with some sort of egg, they’ll eat it,” Mr. Starr said. “If it’s a suckling pig, they’re not going near it.'" (Not true. Suckling pig delicious.)
We Don't Actually Tip Less, But Parties Of Women Still Suck for Waiters: Although the pernicious fiction that women are bad tippers is apparently a myth, we do tend to order less and hold tables hostage four hours so a server can't turn it over.
We're Less Insecure: "A man is more likely to care about being greeted rapturously and treated like an insider," whereas we apparently just want to eat fish and "eggs" in stifling hot mint green rooms, for hours, while seated in a banquette.

But the article notes that we're living in a world where triggers for thinking about death are everywhere — from a news report on Iraq, Burma or China to a car accident you see on the way to work — is it any wonder there's an obesity epidemic in this nation? The question is, what can we do about it? Is there a way to escape our escapism? Distract ourselves from our distraction? Why does soothing your mental heath mean hurting your physical health? Why, mother nature, why? And if you're thinking about death all the time and eating cookies all the time, aren't you just incresing your chances of dropping dead? Sigh. The next time anyone says anything about you snacking, tell 'em you're trying to deal with your crippling thoughts of mortality. And have another cookie.

Thoughts Of Death Make Us Eat More Cookies [New Scientist]

Related: Little Britain: Meeting The Parents [YouTube]

However, the BBC interviews a recovering anorexic named Shannon Bonnette, who says reading web pages about anorexia actually helped her. "What I found through visiting those sites was that there was a common theme — everybody stays miserable," she says. Do social networking sites have a duty to protect members from "dangerous" eating disorder information? If you're looking for that kind of stuff, can't you just find it anywhere? Or is it important for sites to take a stand, make a point of shutting down eating disorder-related groups, out of principle? And who does the banning? Who decides what is "dangerous" and what is just a support group? In any case, it doesn't seem as though the big sites are interested: "Many Facebook groups relate to controversial topics; this alone is not a reason to disable a group," says a rep.

Pro-Anorexia Site Clampdown Urged [BBC News]
Pro-Anorexia Website Warning [ITN]

Related: It's National Eating Disorders Awareness Week [5 Resolutions]