Pig-Out at Budget Talks Shows How Hard It Is to Cut the Fat

While the nation’s leaders struggled over the weekend to cut the fat out of the federal budget, they made no attempts to cut it out of their diets.

During their lengthy White House negotiations, which stretched through mealtimes on Saturday and included a three-hour session Sunday morning, there was no lack of heavy food to stave off hunger pangs and raise blood cholesterol levels for President Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and their aides.

According to reports issued on the sessions, they began Saturday with bagels and cream cheese, then followed with a lunch of turkey-and-cheese, ham-and-cheese and roast beef sandwiches.

For dinner, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta ordered out for pizza rolls. They feasted on 23 sausage-and-pepper rolls and 23 chicken rolls, with Caesar salad and potato salad on the side.

“With a diet like that, it’s not surprising they haven’t been able to make a deal,” said Art Silverman of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the so-called food cops who have taken aim at the fat content of restaurant fare. “It sounds like the people who are trying to take the fat out of the budget could start a little closer to home.”

The pig-out occurred only days before the Clinton administration is slated to release its dietary guidelines, which come out once every five years and are expected to appeal again to Americans to reduce fat consumption. Prevailing guidelines suggest that fat make up no more than 30% of daily dietary intake, with no more than 10% coming from saturated fats, which are converted to cholesterol.

“It’s highly unlikely the budget negotiators came close to meeting those guidelines,” Silverman said.