Letter to President Obama #21 | Subject: Food, and the Food and Drug Administration

Letter to President Obama #21 | Subject: Food, and the Food and Drug Administration

Dear President Obama,

I’ve got a few questions about food and food safety.

First, I read online the other day that a cook at a California diner spotted the Virgin Mary in a griddle. This surprised me for a few reasons. First, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be that concerned who was in the griddle; I’d just try to get them out of there! But the folks at the diner didn’t think to do this; instead, they left Mother Mary in there and featured the griddle in a shrine. Maybe they couldn’t find a spatula.

Anyway, that’s not why I’m writing. I’m writing because I’ve read stories like this on a number of occasions, and it got me wondering—isn’t the Food and Drug Agency on the look-out for this sort of thing? If they’re not, they probably should be.

I’m also a bit confused—I only seem to read about these stories at the grocery store, often while I’m in the checkout line. The tabloids there will have a picture of Mother Mary in a muffin, or a headline proclaiming that a likeness of Jesus was found in a jar of jam, and so on. Is this some sort of weird grocery marketing scheme?

If so, please tell the grocery lobbyists that their plan is a failure; it doesn’t make me want to buy more food. On the contrary, it makes me a lot more careful when I’m cooking. I mean, I’m not a very good Catholic (I’m aiming for Purgatory), but I know I’d be going to gehenna if I accidentally made a member of the Holy Family extra crispy. So now I cook my food more slowly and I eat less. If this isn’t all a grocery conspiracy, I wonder why the less obscure bible characters hardly make an appearance. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Amminadab being found on an apple or Gad on a gumball. Then again, maybe they are there and we’re just not noticing them.

I also have a question about fruits and vegetables. They don’t have rights, do they? As I understand it, if I buy an orange, I can yell at it all I want, right? I know these are weird questions, so let me explain: Something strange happened to me at a Minnesota Twins game I recently attended. During the pregame festivities, all sorts of stuff was going on, and all of a sudden, the field was more or less empty and there were only two people on the field. One guy was dressed up like a banana. The other was dressed up like a strawberry. There was no explanation over the loudspeaker; the announcer guy was too busy trying to tell us about the official milk of the Minnesota Twins. (Only a team in Minnesota would have an official milk. Wisconsin’s baseball team doesn’t even have one—apparently, the official milk of the Milwaukee Brewers is beer.)

Anyway, this strawberry and banana thing made me really mad, because I was thinking about fruits and vegetables for the whole game. And Mr. President, that is NOT what I want to be thinking about at a baseball game. I want to be thinking about malt cups, hot dogs, beer, and my impending obesity, in that order. Anyway, in order to get back at them, I really want to attend another game, dress up in a costume of my own and chase the strawberry and banana around. To terrify them, I’m planning on dressing up as a blender. Ideally, I’d like hire a guy to wear a kiwi costume, catch him, and throw him into the blender, kicking and screaming. Then I’d chase the other two around screaming SMOOTHIE, SMOOTHIE, which I hope would scare them enough to never attend another Major League Baseball Game.

This wouldn’t be illegal, would it? I thought I should ask if it was first before renting the costumes, so please ask the folks at the FDA about this and get back to me.

Thanks,

Brett Ortler