Now there is news of a chemical compound in french fries and chips that causes cancer. I have always believed our food supply was profoundly contaminated and now with all the exposes of corporate depradations more than ever convinced the FDA and EPA are sloppy organizations that could give a ........you know the rest.

A take on what happened to environmentalism: it became Eco this and Eco that and wishy washy hemp face cloths and so drippy --right up there with organic this and organic that. Media saturation made them lose cujones.

Symposia took a friend to lunch yesterday at Michael's on 55th, the place to be seen if you have any literary associations, a clubby sort of place, like the infinitely more charming Riccardo's used to be in Chicago when Studs and Royko and Clarence Page and Basil Talbot and a million Pulitzer winners lunched and drank daily. Michael's is 2005 New York--soulless, pretentious, with overpriced food (the nicoise contained blood red slabs of utterly tasteless tuna and rock hard haricots verts).

We all know tuna is laced with toxic mercury so the Tuna People are spending 25 million this year to create a campaign to neutralize the truth.

Tina Brown writing a book about Diana's real father. Years ago right after the crash we had the same hunch because she looked so different from her siblings; some publishers showed an interest but none jumped on it. Bet they're sorry now. The difference between Symposia and Brown is that we did not follow straight line 'career path' but moseyed around too much and found the life of a writer deadly tedious. Eh bien!

Symposia really hates not being rich; it was only in advanced middle age did the quality of life seem to become a concept. Much as one sneers at the Takis of this world he has a point.

They remove the peanut oil from peanut butter and add a cheaper oil such as canola, soy or cottonseed. Why? Don't ask! In the case of canola it is as greasy and slippery and petrol like as any good GM food should be. Canola is genetically engineered to kill pests and was developed by that Monster (OK Goliath) Monsanto. Prince Charles was and always is right about these matters.

Good old NYTimes' editorial How to Poison a River today: The Marks Farm near Lowville NY -- well as luck would have it in this vail of tears their reservoir blew and with it three million gallons of liquid manure flowed into the Black River, thence to Lake Ontario thence to the tuna in the great oceans thence to.........

News Flash Today 8/18 : girls who eat french fries get breast cancer. They are blaming partially hydrogenated trans fats and pundits recommend manufacturers and restaurants switch to canola oil. The Worst! As bad as cottonseed oil. Rapeseed not meant for human or animal consumption.

Just what we didn't need: another bio of sourpuss Edmund Wilson. He was a writer, a prolific one, ergo he sat in front of a typewriter most of his life and occasionally had odd trysts with the opposite sex. Symposia has always claimed to adore his work but if truth be told we have never enjoyed them because there were so many words, so densely packed it all was very headachy.

We remember our ex Lee Beier calling him from New York in the 1960s and asking to meet him; of course the answer was negative, but he was such an icon of the time. Today a 23 year old would ..oh never mind.....

We just finished MFK's Gastronomical Me which was mesmerizing and dreamlike, where food and wine was cosmically united with fate, experience, etc. Amazing writing, though the person who emerges is a hyper-sensitive, self-absorbed sparrow.

Another jaunt to the North Fork; the wine was better this time and there is a vibrant farm and vineyard scene peopled with refugees from California. Commercialization, ever mushrooming, threatens even the most beautiful of places. Symposia is glad she 'did' Napa in the 1960s.

To make more intellectually interesting my decision to pursue la vie culinaire as a late life career I have read much about the 'real food' movement, slow food, sustainable food, organic food. There are a million think tanks and interest groups and alternative organizations that have made little jabs at the agribusiness giants like ConAgra,Monsanto, DuPont; if they are serious however they need to organize something more comprehensive.

Everyone cheerfully eating those bags of potato chips fried in pesticide-laden cottonseed oil; and since when were we meant to eat cotton? And so on and so forth.