The Globe's Sam Allis trotted out a perennial for his column yesterday, which leaves little doubt of its direction from the opening gun: "Red alert: the gardeners are back. Run to the attic and barricade the door. " You gotta respect the declarative sentence.

Melanie Warner writes today about a soda industry offer to give a Philadelphia-based charity $10 million if the city will vote down what was originally proposed as a two-cent-per ounce tax on sugary sodas.

What came to mind immediately for me was all those deals that bottlers made with school districts: Let us put vending machines in the schools and we'll pay for new sports uniforms, new scoreboards, whatever you want.

Ever heard of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation?

A majority of Californians support a tax on soda to help fund childhood obesity reduction programs, according to a poll carried out on behalf of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and reported at foodnavigator.com.

To start, a bit of boring repetition: I'm a food addict, but I believe unreservedly in personal responsibility. When I was active, no one but me put the food in my mouth, and I was responsible. I'm still responsible, but with help and support, I've been eating healthily for almost 20 years.

Back again today with the Center for Consumer Freedom: This post from yesterday, in their "Big Fat Lies" section, has several points worth commenting on, but I'm going to focus on one:

Who has the right to speak on questions of health? Is there a prerequisite, or can anyone chime in? The CFC's strong opinion is, people who are overweight should keep their mouths shut on questions of overweight. 

Frequent readers will know that I love the frat boys over at the "Center for Consumer Freedom," the intentionally misnomered restaurant and food-industry mouthpiece. They keep serving up testosterone-fueled, logically shaky arguments that beg for skewering.

A friend tipped me off to the blog of Dr. Joe Wright, writer-in-residence for the William B. Castle Society of Harvard Medical School, and I'm glad she did. The jumping off point for this post is Jamie Oliver, the young-ish chef cum nutritional crusader from Britain.

He makes several points, many of them really cogent. Such as...

I'll start with the obligatory: I eat meat. Not as much as I used to, but I don't see myself going vegetarian any time soon.

Having said that, I love this, from Grist mag: "EPA intern offends sensitive meat-industry souls," by Tom Philpott.

The intern, Nicole Reising, wrote, in part, "Regulations can be made to help prevent the effects of meat production, but the easiest way to lessen the environmental impacts is to become a vegetarian or vegan."

In the Times a couple of days ago, health writer Jane Brody wrote about foods advertised to children in a story headlined "Risks for Youths Who Eat What They Watch," and said little that's startling: