Alice Waters writes in a letter to the editor at the NYT Magazine:

For 10 years, our goal at the Edible Schoolyard…has been to bring children into a relationship with food that will nourish them in multiple ways their entire lives, through a hands-on education that connects them both to the garden and the beauty of nature and to the pleasures of cooking and traditions of the table.

Quite a poetic way to treat the idea of a healthy diet, and yet it speaks to exactly the kind of gastronomy so oft talked about in relation to French culture. Some people can easily relate to what Waters is saying, that food is a pleasure, and the bright colors of salmon or kiwis are a delight to the senses as well as the body. Additionally, that the process of cutting and mixing and preparing and straining and washing all adds to the enjoyment of a meal.

Meanwhile, there are the pleasures of a McDonald’s Happy Meal. This is altogether a different kind of enjoyment, and is much more akin to entertainment than anything else. If you think about it too much, it starts to seem like a vortex of branding, purporting to provide you with food that tastes good and is fun, yet merely serving as an engine for hyperconsumerist plots to…well…I don’t know. Feed the epidemic of obesity? I’m not sure what the benefits could be, for those who see them.

I have certainly been feeling pure elation around tomatoes lately. They are so sweet and so cold - in the William Carlos Williams sense. Now that’s almost as good as a Snickers.