Having come of age in the 60’s and 70’s, yours truly has a healthy distrust of anything the government tells him.* And when it comes to food and diet, the Feds get so many things wrong,** it’s best just to ignore them altogether.

Witness the recent mass hysteria brought on by the government warnings about salmonella in tomatoes. Turns out, blaming tomatoes was a bad idea. In fact, most of the stuff you heard a few weeks ago was not supported by any hard evidence – just conjecture and supposition – which didn’t stop the destruction of millions of dollars of tomatoes, because a few people (maybe/supposedly) ate some (actual/really) crappy food at some (possibly) bad restaurants (mostly in Texas.)

The point is, because 922 people got sick from something (nobody knows exactly what), that may or may not be related to salsa, tens of millions of people, thousands of businesses and hundreds of farmers have to suffer…..

Read the tale of government and journalistic panic-button-pushing here in the Wall Street Journal.

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* e.g. Watergate, Vietnam War, Cambodia, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, The Chicago 7, Oliver North, CIA, Henry Kissinger, Three Mile Island, Weapons of Mass Destruction, et al…

** See: IN DEFENSE of FOOD, Michael Pollan, (Penguin Press 2008)