Happy meals. (notes).

My father, the late Irish optimist, once observed that, "You have to eat to live, but what you eat kills you." His words apply especially well to mainstream fast food, given the health issues that surround it--among them obesity and heart disease, antibiotics and growth hormones and animal cruelty. Which leads me to the words of another deceased Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, who said: "My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by herds of oxen, sheep, swine, flocks of poultry and a traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures."

Vegetarianism is not well understood in the popular mind, and opinions about it were not improved by news accounts last April involving a New York City couple whose infant daughter was near death (as of this writing) from a strict vegan diet--nuts, beans, herbal tea--that contained neither mother's milk nor infant formula. The couple's actions are inexcusable, and, as one of our editors put it, "just plain stupid," despite their self-professed good intentions. Yet while these ...