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

California’s Proposition 37, which would require that genetically modified (G.M.) foods carry a label, has the potential to do just that - to change the politics of food not just in California but nationally too.

Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.

To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction.

If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't be eating it.

It's very important to get out, to do reporting. It's also really interesting. I come at it as a journalist, and I think that's helped me, and I come at it as someone who sees nature wherever he looks, and that helps.

Twenty thousand birds moved away from me as one, like a ground-hugging white cloud, clucking softly.