Candidates eating habits on the road

The New York Times posted a fantastic bullshit 2-page article about what the candidates are eating on the campaign trail, and how that should matter to us. Here's some snippets:

The Democratic contenders include Gov. Bill Richardson, a veteran of the Atkins and liquid diets who wears a double chin despite daily workouts. Senator Barack Obama, who was chubby as a child, refers to himself as skinny in speeches and barely touches fatty foods — except at events like the Iowa State Fair, where he ate caramel corn, pork and a corn dog for the cameras. At one campaign event, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said she prayed to God to help her lose weight.

On the Republican side, there is Mike Huckabee, a self-described “recovering food addict” who lost 110 pounds a few years ago. Rudolph W. Giuliani and Fred D. Thompson are on diets imposed by their wives. Mitt Romney is so vigilant about nutrition that he eats the same thing every day: his wife’s granola for breakfast, a chicken or turkey sandwich for lunch, and pasta, fish or chicken for dinner.
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The candidates are “for all intents and purposes out of control of their diets,” said Walter Scheib, former White House chef to the Clintons and the Bushes. Many big events on the preprimary calendar — the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa; the Clyburn Fish Fry in South Carolina; the Iowa State Fair, an everything-fry — seem as likely to produce heart attacks as votes.

Those wanting to be president must never, ever refuse or fumble the local specialties, lest they repeat the sins of John Kerry (dismissed as effete when he ordered a Philly cheese steak with Swiss in 2004) or Gerald R. Ford (on a 1976 swing through Texas, he bit into a tamale with the corn husk still on).
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Mr. Huckabee also eats lightly, sticking largely to salads, protein bars and steamed vegetables. But if a campaign trip he took this month is any guide, his mind tends to wander into more dangerous nutritional territory. At a metal factory in Cedar Falls, Iowa, he stared as a worker punched out a flat disc. “Put a little pepperoni and cheese on that, and you’re made,” he observed. One machine, he said, looked like a grill for rib-eye steaks.

Mr. Huckabee, once so overweight as governor of Arkansas that a chair collapsed under him at a meeting, said in an interview that obesity could put politicians at a disadvantage.

“If you’re really overweight, some people just look at you and immediately sort of write you off,” he said. “They just assume you’re undisciplined.”
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For a group whose problem can often be too much food, the candidates can also be a surprisingly hungry bunch. At breakfast meetings, luncheons and dinner banquets, they are often too busy speaking, shaking hands and signing autographs to eat.

“Very rarely do you get the occasion that you’re sitting down and eating a meal, and even if you are, you’re answering questions,” said Ryan Drajewicz, the assistant responsible for all moment-to-moment needs of Senator Christopher J. Dodd, another of the Democratic contenders.
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The candidates do most of their real eating behind the scenes, and aside from catered meals on private jets, it is a fairly grim culinary affair, an endless procession of grilled chicken on wilted iceberg lettuce and soggy French fries, gobbled between events and in moving vehicles, supplemented by emergency stashes of power bars. When the politicians do get to eat sit-down dinners privately, it is often at 9:30 or 10.

No wonder Mr. Giuliani has sometimes seemed ravenous on the trail. At a stop in Greenfield, Iowa, this summer, he asked photographers to put down their cameras so he could eat undisturbed. And on a springtime stop at a pizzeria in Des Moines, he traveled from table to table of voters, filching some of their food as he went.

The full article, plus a video, is from the New York Times.