Man, these people just don’t get it.

At the FMI mid-winter executive conference, a panel of supermarket mucky-mucks traded pats on the back while complaining that the government’s regulation of their industry is way overdone.

First, alert the media: Big business types think government regulation is onerous. What robber baron, what sweatshop operator, what industrial polluter, what gangster ever thought that government intrusion into his affairs was justified?

In a recent post, I dropped in on the latest flaring of comment over the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ insistence on accepting financial support — about 10 percent of its budget — from Big Food.

[I originally published this post a year (and three days) ago, but I'm bumping it to the top because it fits the thread of discussion kindled by Michele Simon's Eat Drink Politics report of last week.]

Based on my early experience with them, and on what I've heard from others of their experiences, I have long held opprobrium for registered dietitians. But it has recently bubbled over again.

Gotta love a target-rich environment, and that’s what this NBC News story provides: Fat-shaming may curb obesity, bioethicist says.

The kerfuffle continues over the conflict of interest that exists between the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics and the many Big Food giants who sponsor it.

This is the Coke commercial you may have heard about, in which it "tackles" the obesity problem it helps to perpetuate with gauzy images and assertions that range from questionable to bullshit.

Well, actually, it's the commercial's video, but paired with a more honest audio track in which some of Coke's egregious statements and oversights are pointed out.

I've mentioned Phil Werdell enough times that he has his own keyword on the site, and I'm happy to spread word of his work any time I can. He's a friend and a mentor.

Today, I'm spreading word just a little bit farther, or differently, via Today's Honoree, a website that recognizes someone every day. I'm not sure how I found them; more likely, they found me via a broadly cast e-mail campaign, which is not to say spam.

I've been taking a break from blogging, not to get away from it but to concentrate on a 9,000-word speech and accompanying slide show I'm giving in February. I don't know if you've noticed but Klout sure has, dropping me from 61 to 57, so far. I wish I knew what that meant.

A few items have been hanging around the desktop, waiting for me to do something with them, so I'm just tossing them all into this news salad (ugh, another stupid food allusion, like that weak-ass headline).

Like most folks, I'm a sucker for "best" lists, and this is the season for them. From Civil Eats comes a list of the year's best food and agriculture books, and I wanted to share it. It combines mainstream titles such as Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland and The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz with an excellent range of other titles I was glad to learn about.