As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about The Food Taster, bites.ksu.edu French correspondent Albert Amgar sent along this story from Le Monde, and French professor Amy translated.
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In the Parisian restaurant La Fontaine de mars, where Obama ate dinner on Saturday evening, the cooks were stunned: an American secret service member tasted the dishes before they were served to the President of the United States. Nonetheless, this is a precautionary method as old as the earth, even predating Nero and Cleopatra. Who would dare get offended? God save Obama!
A food sampler (male or female) must have excellent taste buds and a certain taste for danger. But his job is really not to be a food taster. He has no right to give his opinion about the menu, the cooking method or preparation of a dish.
The only thing expected of him is to verify the innocuousness of the food destined for the presidential palace. After having brought the spoon to his mouth, a disapproving pout would have a disastrous result. The disgusted look of a food sampler would be in bad taste.
Why limit such precautions to food? While less sudden, some poisons are as dangerous as arsenic or rat poison. There are innumerable heads of state, deprived of efficient food samplers, who were politically killed by an excessive appetite for power.