Really, how safe are these stories?

FIRST the Food section wrote about low temperature fish cookery [“Where Cool Is Hot,� April 27], a story I would retitle “An Invitation to Hepatitis A.� Now, on June 9 in Home, the L.A. Times invites readers to eat raw flowers [“A Veritable Floral Feast�]. I could retitle that: “Lunch With a Light Dusting of Ecozone Pyrethrum.�

Do intelligent people debate the inclusion of these pieces in the paper, or is it a matter of scrambling to fill the “hole�?

Antonio San Marco

Los Angeles