I updated the original comment w/ the original and updated text. Sorry if you saw this as inappropriate — I had updated it before it was upvoted and thought it only clarified the points, not changed it.

Regardless, many deployments use this same technique for just this reason (to avoid spoonfeeding slower clients responses). How is this any more risky than running Apache up front, barring configuration errors (which could just as easily happen with any other server software)?