Daily Gut: Thank You, Fast Food Restaurants

So President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general has a dirty past – one so lurid it has many concerned experts wringing their hands in typical hand-wringing fashion.

What might this skeleton in Dr. Regina Benjamin’s closet be? Did she run a meth lab out of her camper? Were the children running the meth lab doing so without health insurance? Did she use the proceeds from this meth lab to fund the world’s largest puppy mill? And was the puppy mill actually a puppy buffet for a puppy-devouring white power group? No, no, no, and uh, no.

Nope, what she did was far worse: she worked part-time for Burger King, as a scientific adviser.

Predictably, nutritional experts claim that nominating a doctor who worked for Burger King is a horrible conflict of interest – that someone in charge of public health should not be in the business of selling evil fast food. It’s like hiring the shoe bomber to manage a Footlocker. (more…)