So far, 2010 is leaving a sour taste

I thought I would be in a better mood in 2010. I mean, you can't do much worse than 2009.

But after only 24 days, I'm deeply cranky about several things on the food radar.

Watercress-gate: Earlier this month, Food Network aired an episode of "Iron Chef America" starring White House chef Cristeta Comerford competing with Bobby Flay against Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse.

The hook: The chefs were to use vegetables harvested from the White House kitchen garden started by Michelle Obama.

Only they didn't.

Sure, they showed the four chefs tromping through the garden picking and snipping and selecting their bounty. The first lady even made an appearance to tout the garden's local, sustainable, organic symbolism.

Once the group started cooking, they were back at the usual Kitchen Stadium studio in New York City using substitute ingredients from a grocery.

But that wasn't stated during the show. The audience was led to believe that the "secret ingredients" came straight from the White House backyard.

Food Network later issued a statement saying the switch was due to a production delay between the White House shoot and the studio cooking, and that the chefs were allowed to use only types of produce that they had harvested from the garden.

It wasn't exactly a documentary, just prime-time entertainment. Nothing more.

Understand this, though: The deception wasn't an accident. Everyone involved had to know a key part of the premise of the show would be fudged. Months of planning went into the show. The marketing budget alone, which included full-page newspaper ads across the country, was sky high. The results: More than 4 million people watched - a new Food Network record.

But it does prompt a question:

If you'll fake a cook-off using the full backing of the White House for something so insignificant and yet so stage-managed and overhyped that it bordered on the ridiculous, what else will you fake?

Salt, bad! Bad salt, bad! New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, riding his nanny horse, recently compared salt intake to toxic asbestos in classrooms.

Not satisfied with policing trans fats and smoking in bars, Bloomberg has made it his new crusade to restrict salt levels in food served at New York City restaurants.

Never mind that human beings have used salt in cooking since the beginning of time. Or that Hizzoner is confusing salt with sodium intake. Or that he has bigger civic fish to fry (in non-trans fat oil, of course).

If I were the mayor, I'd cook my own meals at home from now on. You know, for his own good. I'd hate for him to run across a chef who might slip a few extra teaspoons of kosher salt into his bisque. That would be awful.

The Taco Bell Diet: Are you kidding me? How stupid do they think we are?