Your Jan. 30 editorial, “The fettucine Alfredo guilt trip,” criticizes the Center for Science in the Public Interest for our study of the healthfulness of Italian restaurant food. The editorial refers to CSPI-among other things-as “finger-wagging,” “evangelical” and “annoying.”
CSPI’s only motivation is to provide consumers and restauranteurs with previously unavailable information on the nutritional quality of restaurant foods. We are not denying anyone what you refer to as life’s “divine little pleasures.” Nutrition information empowers consumers and spurs restaurateurs to improve their menus.
It is simply not true that the only alternative to high-fat, high-salt, high-cholesterol meals is “bland, dreary and healthfully correct” food. Both Chinese and Italian cuisine-as traditionally prepared-are healthful as well as delicious. Both cultures follow the same sound nutritional principles: a diet based predominantly on plantfoods (rice for the Chinese, pasta in Italy) with lots of fresh vegetables and only small amounts of meat, poultry, fish, eggs and cheese.
Unfortunately, our research has shown that the Americanized restaurant versions of both cuisines have all too often turned those principles upside down: enormous portions of meat and cheese swimming in butter and oil, with fewer vegetables, much less grain and far too much salt.
Finally, I would never make the statement that I “go after business and government without worrying about the facts,” a quotation that was falsely attributed to me in a Feb. 15 letter to the editor by Walter W. Reed. For the record, CSPI as an organization and I as an individual are science-based first and foremost.
