Food Police Cease to be a Metaphor

Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 26, 2009

Some people holler about the "food police" when it comes to issues like foie gras bans, menu labeling, and trans fat bans, which I've always consider slightly overblown rhetoric. But now the U.K. has outdone itself with a new door-to-door anti-waste campaign:

'By hitting people at home, rather than in supermarkets, we can get inside their lives', [an official from the Department of Health] said.

'It's only by knocking on doors you can find out what they are having for their tea...'

That's right. A team of people—"food champions"—are going house to house making suggestions about ways to use leftovers and sniffing people's milk to tell them if it's still good. "Officials have been recruited on full-time contracts to visit an estimated 24,500 homes dispensing dietary advice and tips on how best to reduce the estimated one-third of all food bought which is thrown away."

For some reason, this is the worst bit to me: They're planning to come by while people are preparing dinner. 

UPDATE: Jacob Sullum blogged the Telegraph's article on this program earlier.