They are at every public place when you are innocently preparing to place yourself outside a morsel of food.

They are dastardly foes of the most elemental kind of civil liberty.

They are ... The Food Police.

These self-appointed citizen-arbiters of your own good may hardly know you, but they feel they just have to comment on:

• what you eat;

• how much you eat;

• how you season what you eat;

• how much better it is to eat the way they do because ...

• ... if you don't, they're going to live a lot longer than you will.

"How could you use so much salt?" they say with contempt. "How can you taste that coffee with so much sugar in it? How can you eat anything with all that gravy?"

How could I do anything but despise these seemingly well-meaning but oh-so-superior people?

I'll be the first to admit I would be a terrible candidate to write a best-seller on nutrition. But despite the best efforts of my children, my blood pressure is very good, and while I could certainly stand to lose a few pounds, I generally take pretty good care of myself.

The thing is, when I'm at a restaurant having coffee, I'm always going to put the sugar from three of those little packages into the cup — more if it's a real big cup.

I think there ought to be some sort of ordinance against eateries making you tear open those little things if you want to sweeten your coffee.

If there's a glass or plastic container on the table, it's not terribly difficult to distract a member of The Food Police ("Behind you, isn't that Britney Spears?") while you pour in as much sugar as you want.

But with those confounded white packages, even if by sleight of hand you manage to initially hide what you're doing, the evidence is right there on the table.

Of course, you could just sneak the used packages into your pants pocket, but there always seems to be a few grams left, and before you know it, you literally find yourself with ants in your pants.

You can see, friends, that I have given this matter a lot of thought.

Before I go any further, I feel it incumbent upon me to caution any little children who might be reading this not to emulate my gastronomic (look the word up, children) habits.

Don't try this at home, kids. I am a professional.

It's also important to mention that I have no problem whatsoever with loved ones giving us a hard time about what we eat. Anyone who truly cares for us is certainly entitled to nag us until it takes all the pleasure out of our meal.

No, it's the casual-acquaintance Food Police who really get to me. They cannot take anything I eat with a grain of salt.

Just ask one of those characters to perform the simple, human act of please passing the salt and you are very likely in for a lecture on the evils of sodium.

I like salt.

I have read things written by doctors who say if you don't have high blood pressure, a moderate amount of salt isn't going to kill you.

I have also read things written by doctors who say salt is just lurking there waiting to kill you if you give it the least little chance to do so.

I prefer to believe the first doctors I mentioned.

Thus, I use a lot of salt on my french fries.

"Aha!" shout The Food Police. I shouldn't be eating french fries — even without salt.

Fried foods, it appears, will be the death of me unless all that salt beats them to it.

I envision the day in the not-so-distant future when the purchase of a nine-piece Chicken McNuggets and medium fries will entail a clandestine meeting in an alley where the exchange of currency and victuals is done surreptitiously lest The Food Police intervene.

(Yes, I know the CEO of McDonald's died of a heart attack this week, but I doubt very much whether rich guys eat a lot of Big Macs, even if they have huge stock options in the company.)

If they are not stopped, and soon, it won't be long before The Food Police will be pressuring the real police into arresting wives for feeding their husbands Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Author Raymond Chandler wrote in 1938 about the effects of the Santa Ana winds: "Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks."

Were Chandler living now, he'd probably write: "Meek little wives run their fingertips over the holes of the salt shaker and study their husbands' electrocardiogram readings."

James Beard, known far and wide as "The Father of American Cooking," lived to the ripe, old age of 81. "Where," he asked, "would we be without salt?"

Where indeed? Take that, Food Police.

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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.