Food for thought: Have another banana?

Editors who get on their high horse are apt to slip on a fruit peel and go down, steed and all.
We see so many ethical stands. We hear so many grand statements of news as separate from advertising, which journalists call “the dark side.”
Then in the middle of every week we get their food sections, glaring in self-contradiction.
These labor intensive, soft journalism, tepid ventures into consumer reporting, if you can call recipes serious reportage, are a bigger staple than rice and potatoes.
The media critic may lose a job. The book page may disappear. The news bureau may shut down.
Food sections endure.
They wrap supermarket fliers and run grocery coupons. Some peddle wine and spirits or boom high-end restaurants for this nation of foodies.
Now this is the entry point for Harry Highminded, the editor, to blurt at me that eating is news too: “Ever see anyone give up food, heh-heh-heh?”
Well, yes, actually. Famine is increasing. Food riots are starting. Americans are malnourished either through obesity or poverty.
The real news of food is in genetic crops, the biofuels competition for corn and the safety of meat and produce.
News pages covered the massive South Korean protests against American beef imports. How many food editors followed up with coverage of safety in local meat markets?
Or how many check out jail, school and nursing home menus for nutrition?
Or publish health department inspections? Some do, to be sure.
But it’s the unusual food editor who sees a role in questioning advertisers who are the reason the editor has a job.
Media’s hypocrisy over the weekly homage to buying and eating is not a moral cesspool we’ll all drown in. And I’m not on my own high horse.
But it does us all good to admit our hunger for ad revenue isn’t satisfied by pretense at purity.
I agree food is a huge category of news and ripe for investigation and exposition.
Tell me where my milk comes from and why the price is zooming. Explain why Super Wal-Mart is America’s breadbasket but what that’s done to competitive choices. Report on the Food and Drug Administration for scaring us but not protecting us against salmonella in our produce.
Cover nutrition, the real story, not gluttony as typical food sections do.
But don’t try to con me into believing most newspaper food sections are any more than advertising vehicles.
That’s too big a bunch of bananas to swallow on horseback or anywhere else.