In Django Combobox choices, how do you lookup description from short value?

Question

In Django models/forms the choices for a combobox often look like this:

food_choices = (("",""), ("1", "Falafel"), ("2", "Hummus"), ("3", "Eggplant Stuff, Babaganoush???"), 

So the value to be stored in the database will be 1/2/3, but the displayed value on the form will be the long description. When we are working in code outside a form, how can we quickly lookup the long description given the short value stored in the model?

So I want to map short values to long values:

>>print foo("1")
  "Falafel"

Answer 1

get_FOO_display()