Okinawa, one of the longest-lived and healthiest populations in the world, practice a principle they call hara hachi bu: Eat until you are 80 percent full.

We're supposed to show people how the world is, to give them the tools they need to make good decisions as citizens or consumers. Depending on what your values are - the environment, your health, animal welfare - the answers are going to be different for every person.

People don't eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain.

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.

Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honor the things we're eating, the animals and plants and fungi that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the places and the people that produced them. Cooks have their ways of saying grace too... Cooking something thoughtfully is a way to celebrate both that species and our relation to it.

Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.

Don't eat any foods you've ever seen advertised on television.