Food Police

So where were the Food Police when I really needed them? No, I didn’t need the Food Police to tell North Miami High School to limit my consumption of potatoes or prohibit me from drinking refreshing sodas. What I desperately needed the Food Police for in my high school was to abolish Sloppy Joes and a host of other horrible meals which continue to haunt me in flashbacks. To this day I get nauseous at the very smell of Sloppy Joes. It wasn’t just that I found the odor to be detestable, it was the lingering effect. Just one whiff of Sloppy Joe meat sitting inside a stale bun and it was impossible to rid that smell from your nostrils for the rest of the day. Even if my mother were to treat us with juicy steaks for supper, Sloppy Joe smell would still permeate the my lungs ruin my enjoyment of dinner.

The other high school cafeteria food I absolutely hated was pallid hot dogs. That was the only way to describe those hot dogs since they resembled the color grayish brown sickly snails. The texture of those high school hot dogs was like moist cardboard which had only the slightest hint of a pork/beef taste mixed in with copious quantities of soy meal. The scariest thing about the hot dogs wasn’t so much what was in them as what was ON them—suspicious looking flakes.

There were many theories as to what those hot dog flakes were but the scariest guess came from my classmate, Mike Karpovich. He was absolutely convinced that the flakes were really saltpeter which the school administration added atop the hot dogs to diminish the sex drive of the teenage boys by shriveling up vital parts of their bodies.

Lou Tripician tried to calm things down by countering Karpo’s hypothesis by “assuring” us the flakes were just harmless dandruff from the school cooks. Neither theory was very appetizing but they both had the same end result: removing hot dogs from my menu list.

Since Sloppy Joes made me nauseous and hot dogs were out of the question, that pretty much narrowed my choices down to sticky spaghetti covered with watered down sauce. Also much less than appetizing.

So why didn’t I just walk off campus to get some real food? The answer was simple. Time. I didn’t have time to go the few blocks to grab some real food and make it back to school in time for my next class. Of course, the food I would have chosen would have met the disapproval of the Food Police. Food like cheeseburgers or pizza slices washed down with copious quantities of the taboo soda.

In case you think I am totally against the Food Police, you would be wrong. It’s just that I think the Food Police are looking in the wrong places and at the wrong foods to ban. However, they are definitely needed in one area of the country where many of the children are nutritionally deprived. I am speaking of Beverly Hills.

Are you surprised? Well, I used to live in La-La Land and I can tell you that many Beverly Hills children are victims of the wacky nutritional ideas of their liberal parents. I guarantee you that there are scores of kids in Beverly Hills that have never tasted meat because it is prohibited by their politically correct vegetarian parents who also forbid their children from consuming dairy products.

Therefore the humanitarian in your humble correspondent is urging the food police to send an convoy of food trucks to Beverly Hills to provide those gastronomically deprived children with emergency supplies of cheeseburgers, pepperoni pizzas, and ice cream. Perhaps Sally Struthers could go back on television, this time to urge viewers to send money to the Fund for Nutritionally Deprived Beverly Hills Children.

So be thankful tonight when your kids are eating taboo foods such as potatoes. It could be much worse for them if they were from Beverly Hills. And if you ever visit that neighborhood, be sure to bring chocolate bars to hand out to those sad children.