An April 27 Times web feature on "how to eat healthy meals at restaurants" showed up in my print edition of the Times this morning, two weeks after it originally appeared on the Web. The feature includes the following sentence: "Outside of major metropolitan areas, where restaurant choices are more limited, egg-based lunches and dinners are a good way to eat well."
That's a bad sentence for two reasons. First,it's clumsily worded. The phrase "where restaurant choices are more limited" is shoved up against "major metropolitan areas," not against "outside," making it sound at first as if the Times thinks restaurant choices in major metropolitan areas are "more limited." Second, once a reader figures out the meaning the Times is trying to convey, it's astoundingly condescending. As if once a Times reader gets outside the safety of New York, San Francisco, Paris, or London, the prudent move is just to order scrambled eggs for dinner. The authors of the Times article should go read Jane and Michael Stern's book Roadfood and consider revising the Times article to acknowledge that plenty of fine food is available in America outside "major metropolitan areas."