ABSTRACT
The food police are everywhere, from the idiot box to the US Cong well, to the other idiot box. Given that life expectancy has reached seventy-six years, as opposed to forty-seven years in 1900, the nationwide hysteria over the mortal peril posed by Doritos and Budweiser and a medium-rare steak seems odd; saturated fat gets worse press than Jack the Ripper ever did. One can also assume that they are not reading Center for Science in the Public Interest's (CSPI's) Nutrition Action Healthletter. This monthly newsletter, the group's flagship, really must be read to be believed. And read it is: circulation is an astonishing 800,000, and surely not every reader cherishes it for the unintentional laughs or the gruesome photographs. In the early 1990s, CSPI mandarins aimed their scattershot fire at new targets: the increasingly popular ethnic cuisines. The highest-profile victim was Chinese food.
