Criminal

Last week, news surfaced about a "chef" in Colorado who intentionally served his gluten-free customers regular, high-gluten pasta because he thought their Celiac Disease was "all in their heads". I've been waiting for this story to make mainstream media, and I'm very disappointed that it hasn't.

If someone purposely served children with a peanut allergy something with peanut oil in it for any reason they'd be flayed alive on national tv for days! Heck, if someone furtively and intentionally served a Muslim pork or a vegetarian meat they'd be hauled into court an keel-hauled!

I'm not sure which concerns me more about this mess: (1) that gluten-free diets are being considered a fad when for so many people its actually a matter of life and death, or (2) that Americans still fail to recognize one of the fundamental paradoxes of our food supply - some of the lowest paid, least educated and least interested people in the national work force are daily entrusted with control over a hazardous, potentially lethal substance that impacts everyone, every day!

(That's not a slam on food service workers - I did food service for 10 years and fully appreciate the many amazing people who dedicate their lives to safe, high- quality food artisan-ship. It is, however, an acknowledgement that 90% of food service workers are making minimum wage, lacking appropriate training and in positions where mishandling of product can severely injure others.)

I'm not going to get off on a rant about our broken system and its alternatives. But I would like to offer a thought to stick in the back of your head. These little events are constant warning bells, ringing in the background of our lives, telling us clearly that something is very, very wrong with the way we live and with the assumptions we take for granted about how the world works in relation to food.

It is unwise to ignore these incidents, to brush them off because they don't happen to impact us personally. It is only by acknowledging them and making the choice to respond to the fundamental truths they represent that we can prevent a wholesale collapse of our sick and fractured system.

I'm no fan of our nation's overly-litigious mindset, but in this case I think criminal charges of this lunatic "chef" are more than justified. Poisoning someone on purpose is a crime, regardless of where and why you do it. And just maybe, if we drag this scumbag through court, we can force the nation and the media to pay attention. Force them to start asking the honest questions about how we handle our food that will need to be dealt with before we can ever hope to muddle our way out of this culinary nightmare we've gotten ourselves into.