If we have a food supply that we can't trust, that has enormous implications for the way we view government, for the way we trust business, and for our international trade relations.

Restaurants that have health-conscious consumers will pay attention to this.

We don't really have any that protect the food supply from farm to table. We have a food safety system that's piecemeal, largely divided between two agencies that don't talk to each other very much. Neither agency can enforce regulations from the farm to the table.

It's a completely reasonable diet -- heavy on fruits and vegetables and fresh, seasonal foods. I'm totally for it. It's common sense in a nice package.

FDA, which regulates the safety of vegetables, doesn't have those kinds of rules because Congress doesn't want it to. It's not that the vegetables themselves have anything wrong with them; it's that they're contaminated with animal manure. One of the rationales for a single food safety agency is that you can't separate animals from vegetables.

I live in the United States, and I'm not moving. But from the standpoint of food safety, the countries in Scandinavia do it better than we do. It's not that they don't have food-poisoning incidents; it's that there are many fewer in proportion to the population.

One can only be in awe of the creativity of chocolate marketers. My take is that if there is a health benefit, it is small.