Gingrich on the Culinary Trail in Iowa INDEPENDENCE, Iowa - Is it a coincidence that Newt Gingrich's long and winding bus tour has stopped at many food businesses? There has been Mabe's Pizza, Tish's Restaurant, M's Fine Dining, the Chocolate Season, Pizza Ranch and the Santa Maria Winery. The campaign bus drove right into a soda bottling plant in Atlantic on Saturday, in case the candidate wanted to load up a pallet of orange Fanta. "We just came from Farmer's Kitchen," Mr. Gingrich told supporters as he stepped out, "which may have the largest slices of pie in the country." Never a svelte figure, Mr. Gingrich seems to have put on weight as the campaign has entered its seventh month. Viewed from the side in a double-vented blue blazer Sunday evening while posing for photographs, he looked in profile like the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock from the old television series. "I have certain weaknesses as you can tell," he joked at an ice cream shop in Creston the other day as he gazed wistfully at a half-finished root beer float during his stump speech. Food is No. Life on the campaign trail is murder on diets. The pace is nonstop, the schedule does not always include sit-down meals, and supporters are forever thrusting high-fat, high-calorie treats on the candidate. Despite Mr. Gingrich's humor about food, his campaign is sensitive about questions regarding his avoirdupois, just as it is about health issues. The public expects the men and women auditioning for president to be superheroes, running a marathon of seven-day weeks with 6:30 a.m. wake-up calls and 1:30 a.m. hotel arrivals - never showing human frailty. Mr. Gingrich felt compelled to open a news conference Sunday evening with a bulletin about why he had looked wan in recent days, a subject of speculation. "I had a mild flu on Thursday and Friday,"" he announced. "It was a crisis, but we survived it."" Asked about Mr. Gingrich's weight issues, his spokesman, R.C. Hammond, denied Mr. Gingrich has had any since the campaign began. "I can't believe you're actually doing something about his weight," he told a reporter. Pressed, Mr. Hammond conceded, "He does enjoy a good meal." Mr. Gingrich, asked if he had put on weight, said here: "I don't know. I hope not. Earlier, one of Mr. Gingrich's aides had confided that rather than have his clothes tailored, Mr. Gingrich owns suits in three sizes to pull from his closet as his figure fluctuates. In New Hampshire last month, he was asked by an overweight teenager, clearly nervous, about childhood obesity. Mr. Gingrich, who has a gift for putting questioners at ease, joked about his own weight. "I concluded that God wanted me to be a raccoon rather than a gazelle," he said.