Fear of Food: A Phobia for the ‘90s : Agriculture: Anxiety over hormones, pesticides and toxins--all in one dish--ruins appetites.

Julia Child has been lamenting the fact that so many of us have fallen into fear of food lately. She’s talking about butter and cream, calories and cholesterol--the dangers of a good chocolate mousse or a pate en croute.

But she doesn’t know the half of it.

Julia has never sat down to lunch with my friend, J.J.

The other day J.J. and I were comfortably seated at a no-smoking table at the Cafe au Courant. J.J. confides she hasn’t been out to eat in a restaurant since the “60 Minutes” chicken expose, which she claims put a damper on her appetite. Today she made the sacrifice of exposing herself to unknown dangers from a restaurant kitchen in honor of my birthday.

“Would you like drinks, ladies?” asks our actor/waiter, Bruce.

“We’d like to see the wine list, but let’s have some water please,” I request.

J.J. pales at the mention of water. “Don’t you know about toxins from the tap?,” she asks. “Chlorinated solvents? Lead? PCBs? Not to mention pathogenic bacteria?”

“Maybe we just need a drink. I know I do. Let’s get a bottle of wine.”

“Are you kidding?”

“It’s a special occasion.”

“OK, I’ll overlook the sulfites.”

While we sip a glass of wine, Bruce recites the specials.

“Caesar salad with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, freshly tossed at your table . . . .”

“No, no raw eggs in the dressing. Salmonella alert!” J.J. hisses.

“We also have a lovely Waldorf salad . . . .”

“No good. Apples. Alar!”

“A lovely slice of melon with prosciutto di Parma?”

J.J. looks worried.

“It’s just been decriminalized. What are you worried about--nitrates, nitrites?” I ask, wanting to appear informed.

“The melon is even worse,” she gasps. “Most fruits are sprayed with pesticides and fungicides. You wanna eat daminozide? Mancozeb? Methyl parathion? The pesticides just seep right in. A double threat!” J.J. warns.

“Cactus pear salad?” Bruce offers.

We both shrug. Something so exotic hasn’t made its way into J.J.’s health and nutrition file. So she asks Bruce, “Is the cactus farm-raised?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Bruce demurs. “No one has ever asked before, but I’ll be happy to find out.”

“It’s from the desert,” he reports moments later.

“OK, we’ll take two,” I say, hoping to move us closer to a main course.

Realizing that Bruce needs a rest, I tell him to go ahead and get the salad while we study the menu for a main course.

“Look, can’t we just relax. You’re not going to die from one meal. All these things have a cumulative effect,” I point out.

“Obviously you missed Donahue. A doctor’s wife was just on describing how her husband dropped dead after consuming one portion of contaminated fish. He went just like that.”

“That’s a fluke. You know how hard it is to get on Donahue,” I say.

Returning to the menu, I suggest something that looks good to me: grilled fillet of beef and tomatoes on baby greens with polenta.

“Great! Hormones, pesticides and alfatoxins--all in one dish! Forget it,” she screams.

“OK, let’s just have plain grilled salmon.”

“Excellent choice,” Bruce approves. “It’s farm-raised and the chef does it to perfection -- just rare.”

J.J. blanches.

“Well, can the chef bring himself to cook it well done this time?” I ask, desperate to save the day.

“Well done?” Bruce sneers.

“Yes, by all means, incinerate the parasites,” J.J. slips in.

“Very well, madam.”

Just when I thought we had successfully negotiated the land mines of the modern menu, I noticed J.J. was sniffling.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing serious. It’s just from the histamines in the wine,” she says.

Tensely I make it through the cactus salad and the salmon while J.J. hardly touches hers.

“Drink up,” I suggest, hoping to liven things up.

Bruce wheels the dessert cart over and recommends the festive floating island.

“Are those egg whites cooked or just whipped to a frenzy?” wonders J.J.

Bruce looks puzzled. In the interest of saving time and getting to his audition, he says, “Here, have a piece of chocolate cake on me. It’s positively sinful.”

“I suppose we do need to keep our energy up,” J.J. replies, trying to be a good sport.

“Great,” I say. “And I’ll have coffee, no, uh, decaf.”

“It’s just as bad,” says J.J., whipping herbal tea bags from her purse and giving me one. “Happy birthday!,” she says, emptying two packets of Sweet ‘N Low into her tea.

“Well,” she says defensively, “I have to watch my weight.”