I've withheld comment on pink slime until now for shifting reasons, and I probably ought to shut up still, but the topic continues to flit across my screens.

At first, I couldn't really get into it, and not only because I haven't eaten beef in longer than a decade: OK, ground beef has fillers in it. Not much news there. Yes, I had questions about treating non-nutritive meat trimmings with ammonia, but otherwise, I just couldn't get up for it.

Here’s a bold idea for you: Let’s invalidate all the laws that criminalize sexual contact with minors.

Dumb, right? Abhorrent! Who would dare suggest that we not protect young people, deemed too young to make informed choices about entreaties from adults who would exploit them?

Well, the entire consumer manufacturing sector, but especially junk-food manufacturers, and perhaps the courts, too.

This is the last in a series of posts based on a recent f.a.c.t.s. (“food advertising to children and teens score”) report on sugary sodas issued by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. A while ago, the center did a similar report on the advertising of junk food to children, and you can read my excerpts from that here.

This is another in a series of posts based on a recent f.a.c.t.s. (“food advertising to children and teens score”) report on sugary sodas issued by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. A while ago, the center did a similar report on the advertising of junk food to children, and you can read my excerpts from that here.

The fractures of mass media have forced marketers to develop new ways of reaching their targets, and the sugary beverage industry is a particularly relentless hunter. One older example is Coke's purchase of space at the judges' table on American Idol for its logo-ed cups, but the Rudd Center report adds plenty more:

This is another in a series of posts based on the recent f.a.c.t.s. (“food advertising to children and teens score”) report on sugary sodas issued by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. A while ago, the center did a similar report on the advertising of junk food to children, and you can read my excerpts from that here.

My predominant attitude toward paid corporate mouthpieces: Shut the hell up. Of course they have the right to speak, but if they're just spouting a line, I don't want to hear it. But sometimes, I do appreciate the chuckles I get when they do start talking.

Here's a bunch of crap from Elaine Kolish, vice president of the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, an industry-run front erected to forestall binding curbs on advertising of junk food to kids:

I was at a kids' birthday party a week or so ago, discussing the relative merits of juice with a handful of other parents.

Yes, I lead an exciting life.

Some people oppose any public suasion of any kinds on food choices — and even some of those do so honorably, instead of being motivated merely by their paycheck. I suspect they would object to the above.

But here's the thing, even putting aside the question of whether sugary soda is even food, or, in the coinage of Michael Pollan, a "foodlike substance." If any currently "acceptable" food or drink product warrants this sort of treatment, it is sugary soda.

As soon as I'm done writing this post, I'm going next door to return the box of Trader Joe's Multigrain O's cereal I bought the other day.

It seemed like such a good idea when I saw it — perched colorfully with its identical siblings on the end cap — that I went for it, even thought I'd bought plain old regular O's at the Stop and Shop 15 minutes prior.

Both were for Joe, of course, who fulfills the kids-love-Cherios stereotype admirably. I knew he'd all those O's soon enough, and the TJ's box just shouted good tidings: Not only was it multigrain, but it promised 14 grams of whole grains per serving, 29 percent of the RDI for whole grains. (How whole grains appear in a box of O shapes, I don't know, but I'm sure they can back that up. I guess. I mean, they're marketers, not (outirght) liars.)

The package also cries out low fat in orange capital letters, on top of a list of 9 vitamins and minerals the cereal is "an excellent source" of.

So I was pretty surprised when I got home, though perhaps I shouldn't have been, that Trader Joe's Multigrain O's cereal, is a glazed sugary cereal. Sugar is the second ingredient, and brown sugar is the sixth. Every ounce has six grams of sugar.

Two items crossing my screen in the past couple of days illustrate the fabulously roiled field of food and food politics.

First, my pal Deborah Lapidus at Corporate Accountability International wrote to ask that I add my voice against the corporate food lobby's attempt in Arizona to prevent local cities and towns from even proposing laws that would impede marketing of junk food to children.