PLEASE tell me they are KIDDING

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Jennifer

PLEASE tell me they are KIDDING

When i read this in the times last week I literally checked the date on the paper to make sure I hadn't time warped to April Fool's Day or something..

I know it's long, but make sure you get to the GOGGLES part....

September 29, 2006
2 Blintzes Only, and a Toast to Your Health

By CLYDE HABERMAN
Determined to make New Yorkers healthier, whether or not it’s what they want, the Bloomberg administration unveiled more regulations yesterday for restaurants and bars. These rules go beyond the smoking ban and the new attempt by City Hall to make cooking with artificial trans fats a thing of the past.

The latest ideas are only proposals for now. But if they become reality, they will change the way business is conducted at virtually every restaurant in the five boroughs.

Under one recommendation, diners will be required to chew their food for at least 12 seconds before swallowing. This new strategy recognizes that insufficiently chewed food can kill if it lodges in the throat, city officials said (agreeing to be interviewed only if granted anonymity because they feared being yelled at by higher-ups and because we, for our own reasons, chose to play along).

The officials acknowledged that enforcement of the 12-second rule — formally known as the Proper Mastication Initiative, or P.M.I. — would be difficult. But they said that steakhouses in particular would be closely watched by health inspectors, given that the risks of insufficient chewing are severe in those places.

As part of the P.M.I., waiters would be ordered to pay special attention to how customers cut their food.

A piece of steak, for example, may not be ingested if it is more than half an inch thick or longer than three-quarters of an inch on any side. Violators may be ordered to leave the restaurant.

To underline the hazards of unsafe dining, customers would also be required, before they are seated, to study the Heimlich maneuver posters that restaurants are supposed have on their walls.

A party of six or more may be seated right away, but the waiter must then bring a poster to the table and make sure that everyone reads it before he takes drink orders.

Speaking of drinks, another proposed rule would limit restaurantgoers to no more than two glasses of wine or two pints of beer with dinner. Only one glass or pint would be allowed if the customer had a premeal drink.

While experts have long recognized the beneficial effects of a little alcohol, thresholds must be established to ensure good health, the officials said.

Two drinks, they said, struck City Hall as a reasonable limit.

Other possible rules are being studied, the officials added.

Some Asian restaurants may be ordered to provide customers with goggles, a protective measure seen as especially necessary at sushi bars. Seating at the counter is often tightly packed.

It is all too easy, officials said, for a diner who gesticulates broadly in conversation to poke someone’s eye out with his chopsticks.

BECAUSE so many New Yorkers are overweight, other kinds of restrictions may be needed, the officials said.

One idea, governing dairy restaurants, would limit customers to two blintzes per order, instead of the three that are now the norm in many places.

Italian restaurants would be encouraged to serve only whole wheat pasta. As incentives, tax credits and cash bonuses might be offered, not unlike a recently announced administration plan to reward poor people for staying in school or keeping doctors’ appointments. Bars, too, might be given tax breaks if they expanded their stocks of low-calorie beers.

One controversial proposal would require restaurants to serve only decaffeinated coffee after 10 p.m. Caffeine consumed late at night is plainly not healthful. It leaves many people unable to get a good night’s sleep.

For much the same reason, no one over 50 would be served red meat after 9 p.m. “It’s for their own good,” one official said.

Predictably, after word of the new program leaked out, restaurant owners and their lobbyists objected, calling the proposals overly restrictive and potentially harmful to their businesses. Some of them threatened to take the mayor and the health commissioner to court.

Worried that lawsuits could delay their plans for a long time, city officials said last night that they were open to possible compromises.

To preserve the core of the Proper Mastication Initiative, they said, they were prepared to abandon the requirement that diners study the Heimlich maneuver posters.

That struck some political analysts as a sensible retreat. After all, they said, how much eat-your-peas governance can anyone take on an empty stomach?

Posted 10/2/06 11:50 AM