Culture, when it comes to food, is of course a fancy word for your mom.

The corporatization of something as basic and intimate as eating is, for many of us today, a good place to draw the line.

In general, science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals - Nature, Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine - which set the agenda.

There are things we know and things we don't know about food. But there are certain basic things we do know, and that's what I've tried to build these rules on.

We are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem.

We have food deserts in our cities. We know that the distance you live from a supplier of fresh produce is one of the best predictors of your health. And in the inner city, people don't have grocery stores. They have to get on a bus and take a long ride to get to a source of fresh produce.

...Only the big food manufacturers have the wherewithal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world. Generally, it is the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often bad science.