Getting caught up on the news

A surge in work is typical before the NRA Show, and even a freelance restaurant writer wasn’t exempted this year, a sign itself that business conditions are improving. A barrage of assignments frustrated RestaurantRealityCheck from reporting several trends that merit winces or ooohs from the industry. Here, in several installments, are a few newsreel-worthy subjects that shouldn’t slip past unnoticed.

The obesity witch hunt is waning. Chain restaurants have been vilified for years as the agents of excess who made kids fat. If those glitzy temples didn’t sell families so many shakes and fries, the argument holds, the tykes wouldn’t be consuming more calories than they burn. We wouldn’t have a childhood obesity problem in the United States.

Somewhere along the way, reason snuck into the discussion. Talk of who’s to blame has given way to a new topic of discourse, the encouraging concept of “healthy communities.”

A more holistic approach, it holds that the problem has to be rectified by overhauling communities—their infrastructures and their sensibilities—instead of hanging one component as the culprit.

In this fresher way of thinking, communities have to consider such factors as how they inadvertently discourage routine exercise. Do they have sidewalks? Safe playgrounds? Bike paths? Can kids walk to school, or have the layout and customs all but guarantee that youngsters get a ride?

Similarly, are healthful options even present? Are there markets where the right sort of foods can be purchased, or has the community lapsed into a nutritional desert, where most of the choices come in single-serving cellophane bags?

Fast-food places are still part of the scrutiny, as any food emporium should be in a broad-stroke approach. After all, the very notion is that every component of a community has to do its part.

So proponents look at factors like the ratio of processed-food outlets to markets featuring fresh, ideally locally grown fare.
Similarly, they haven’t abandoned the controversial notion that restaurants should filter their communications to children since parents often don’t.

Indeed, under pressure from no less a force than the White House, where First Lady Michelle Obama is championing the healthy communities approach, the Federal Trade Commission plans to start taking fast-food marketers to task. The watchdog agency’s chairman has indicated that he may subpoena chains to see if they upheld promises made in 2005 to change what and how they market to kids. He’s suggested that regulation may be the fallback if volunteer curbs weren’t implemented.

Similarly, a report issued earlier this week by the White House has stoked calls for a heavier sales tax on foods that pose a health risk.

After reviewing all the obesity-focused legislation passed by states last year, the National Conference of State Legislatures concluded that children’s health advocates are increasingly framing their efforts as the pursuit of healthy communities. It’s clearly become the prevailing way of looking at the issue, a refreshing change from the blame game.

Restaurants need to embrace and promote that more reasonable approach, even if it means shouldering some responsibility and making some significant changes.

India's Rx for food safety: Poisoning courts

Because death is even less popular than taxes, you’d think more politicians would rail against the perils of food contamination and make it their headline-snagging cause.

Then again, look at how that tactic’s working for Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior senator from my state. The upstate Democrat held a press conference on Sunday to awaken the populace to the dire threats lurking in supermarkets and restaurants. More than 900 food products have been yanked off the market since 2005 because they posed a danger, the result of disturbing safety violations, she stressed.

You probably didn’t know she’s calling for all ground beef to be tested for E.coli contamination, a major step toward neutralizing a safety scourge. But who can bother with matters like that when Balloon Boy’s father is being questioned by the police?

You have to feel sorry for the proponents of food-safety reform. The reaction they’re drawing just seems out of sync with the cause. Today, for instance, 16 people personally touched by a food-poisoning catastrophe visited the White House to push for more stringent safeguards. They were foisted off on the assistant White House chef, Sam Kass, who was described in statements as one of President Obama’s advisors on food policy. “I’d recommend the sweet potato fries today because they’re in season, Mr. President.”

Okay, the entourage also snagged ear time from David Lazarus, a senior-level official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, the lead White House staffer on Obama’s Food Safety Working Group. But the Beer Summit was treated as more important.

Maybe the notion of regulatory or legislative reform just isn’t sexy enough. Perhaps we should consider using the judicial branch of government as a powerful agent of change.

That’s what India is considering. A proposal has reportedly been aired there to create a secondary court system exclusively for cases involving alleged instances of food contamination. The new ministry would be a place of recourse when food-safety authorities find a processor that isn’t adhering to standards.

Not that infractions are difficult to detect, apparently. The news coverage notes that 1 million cases of alleged safety infringements are currently waiting to be heard by conventional courts.

No limo drive-thrus for this Presidency

Much has been written about the White House's planned organic garden, where children--presumably the President's as well as others--can learn about healthy eating. Sasha and Malia have already absorbed the concept that fast-food can be very bad for you--much to the frustration of Michelle Obama. Here's an excerpt from a story that was published yesterday on the New York Times' website:

Yet her efforts to teach her daughters about eating right have been successful enough that there are now certain fast-food places — she declined to identify them — where the girls themselves refuse to go.

“Some of them I want to go to, because it’s quick and easy,” Mrs. Obama said, “and you figure, ‘Well, we ate fine all week, guys, let’s go get this.’ They’re like, ‘No, Mommy, we won’t be eating there.’ And I feel like, ‘Darn, where are we going to go?’

The article also reveals that Mrs. Obama is a big fan of French fries. “I could live on French fries,” she said.

Obama set to encourage restaurant lending

I’ve slipped on my thick plastic glasses with the tape on the nosepiece because it’s Geek Time. With the possible exception of insurance policies and nuns—wait, scratch nuns—nothing is less sexy than the Small Business Administration and its loans process. Tax forms read like porn in comparison.

Yet the White House is expected to make an announcement today about the SBA that’s of crucial importance to restaurants, and that needs to be noted. Press reports that hit in a flurry yesterday say President Obama will channel some $375 million from the stimulus spending kitty into the SBA’s loan program, a pipeline regularly used by restaurant franchisees. Indeed, the restaurant business is reportedly the most frequent user of SBA loans, which are channeled to small enterprises through designated local banks.

In the world of grassroots restaurant financing, this is hot. Angelina Jolie hot.

Lending to small businesses would also be helped by the infusion of $10 billion in stimulus funds into the secondary credit market. The planned injection is intended to encourage the flow of capital to small businesses by increasing lenders’ confidence they can sell the loans on the so-called secondary market, thereby turning that deal into cash they can then use to make another loan.

Unfreezing capital for restaurant expansion or renovation would be a tremendous boon to the industry. Obama appears to have a blowtorch in one hand, the match in the other.