ABSTRACT
If Herbert Hoover's promise of a chicken in every pot failed to stir the voters, imagine how little appeal a lentil in every pot would have for Americans. Yet that is, with only a slight caricature, the goal of one of the most media-savvy groups in all of National Nannydom: the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Credit cards are most commonly used at restaurants, which in CSPI demonology are only slightly less sinister than the snake in the Garden of Eden. The joylessness of the CSPI dietary regimen is reflected in as mundanely bizarre an incident as its president Michael Jacobson eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant. In the harrowing world of CSPI, pleasure is suspect. These guys make Cotton Mather look like a lotus-eating, chaise-lounge-reclining sybarite. Nor is there such a thing as goofing off. Even downing a Pepsi after a strenuous workout is a virtual sin for one has consumed 160 calories of nothing.
