Government food ratings get an F

New York City, whose Department of Health has meddled with food producers' business for years, has recently begun issuing letter grades to restaurants based on the results of unannounced inspections. And, apparently, although keeping smoked fish at a temperature deemed too warm by the bureaucrats is enough to get a restaurant a C rating, you can have mouse poo on the floor and still get an A.

Food writer Kat Odell, based in Los Angeles (a city that has issued letter grades for years), advises New Yorkers to look past the grades. As Odell writes, a pileup of minor infractions that won't actually hurt anybody (such as mislabeling of food containers or cracked tiles in the floor) can get a restaurant slapped with a C, whereas real threats to health, if isolated, can be glossed over with an A. Not to mention that, in many cases, what is safest by a bureaucrat's judgment isn't always what tastes best. The USDA has been urging us to overcook our steaks for years, and city health department officials are no different; they'd like us to have dumplings steamed in metal, rather than bamboo, containers, even if this cooking method affects their taste; they'd like us to eat our smoked fish ice-cold, even if eating it a little warmer brings out its flavor better.

This is what comes of substituting a bureaucrat's judgment for your own. In a free market, consumers could decide on their own whether, for example, having your dumplings steamed in the most perfectly sanitary way possible is more important, or whether it's better to enjoy a dumpling at its tastiest, with a small risk of bacteria from the bamboo. I know which one I would pick. But in our era of city health department dictators, restaurants are pressured to sacrifice taste in the name of risk avoidance.

I, for one, plan to follow Kat Odell's advice of ignoring the letter grades and finding out for myself whether the restaurants I patronize are clean and sanitary enough for my purposes -- not for some bureaucrat's.