The soda of liberty

Evil woman!

James Lileks wades into Mayor Bloombergs plan to tell New Yorkers how big a soda they may buy and he takes no prisoners.

A culture that redefines food choices as moral issues will demonize the people who don’t share the tastes of the priest class. A culture that elevates eating to some holistic act of ethical self-definition - localvore, low-carbon-impact food, fair trade, artisanal cheese - will find the casual carefree choices of the less-enlightened as an affront to their belief system. Leave it to Americans to invent a Puritan strain of Epicurianism.

This is on a par with why I dislike vegetarians and vegans.  It isn't because they won't eat meat (or claim they don't).  I have nothing but healthy respect for my friends who say that they don't eat meat because they don't like it or for health reason.  Heck, I'm married to a woman who won't eat any meat unless it's ground and my daughter is just as bad and I love them both dearly.  No, what I dislike is people who wear their diet as a badge of moral vanity–worse, as a mandate to tell me what to eat.  And, as Mr Lileks points out, the same goes for the rest of their ilk.


And I don't even like soda.

You will find me drinking rum,

Like a sailor in a slum,

You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian

You will find me drinking gin 

In the lowest kind of inn

Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

So I cleared the inn of wine,

And I tried to climb the sign,

And I tried to hail the constable as "Marion."

But he said I couldn't speak,

And he bowled me to the Beak

Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.

Oh, I know a Doctor Gluck,

And his nose it had a hook,

And his attitudes were anything but Aryan;

So I gave him all the pork

That I had, upon a fork

Because I am myself a Vegetarian.

I am silent in the Club,

I am silent in the pub.,

I am silent on a bally peak in Darien;

For I stuff away for life

Shoving peas in with a knife,

Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.

No more the milk of cows

Shall pollute my private house

Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian

I will stick to port and sherry,

For they are so very, very,

So very, very, very, Vegetarian.

G K Chesterton