That anyone should need to write a book advising people to "eat food" could be taken as a measure of our alienation and confusion. Or we can choose to see it in a more positive light and count ourselves fortunate indeed that there is once again real food for us to eat.

A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with corn-fed beef.

One of the problems is that the US government supports unhealthy food and does very little to support healthy food. I mean, we subsidize high fructose corn syrup. We subsidize hydrogenated corn oil. We do not subsidize organic food. We subsidize four crops that are the building blocks of fast food. And you also have to work on access. 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.

A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals.

Food is not just fuel. Food is about family, food is about community, food is about identity. And we nourish all those things when we eat well.

The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them.

There's something magical that happens when people eat from the same pot. The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It's where we learn to share; it's where we learn to argue without offending. It's just too critical to let go, as we've been so blithely doing.