For though we may be the Earth's gardeners, we are also its weeds. And we won't get anywhere until we come to terms with this crucial ambiguity about our role - that we are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem.

Without such a thing as fast food, there would be no need for slow food.

In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.

Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.

One surprise is how deeply the food system is implicated in climate change. I don't think that has really been on people's radar until very recently. 25 to 33 percent of climate change gases can be traced to the food system. I was also surprised that those diseases that we take for granted as what will kill us - heart disease, cancer, diabetes - were virtually unknown 150 years ago, before we began eating this way.

Eat with consciousness. When you eat with consciousness, and you know what you're eating, and you eat it in full appreciation of what it is, it's enormously satisfying.

The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies.