It has become much harder, in the past century, to tell where the garden leaves off and pure nature begins.

I agree insofar as we eat too much meat. We're eating about 200 pounds per person per year. That's about 9 ounces a day. That's probably more than is good for us and it's certainly more than is good for the environment.

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.

Yes, I very much like to have a personal stake in what I’m writing about.

Cooking meat over a fire is one of the most stirring of those ritual acts, usually performed outdoors, on special occasions, in public, and by men.

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.

There's a lot of research that suggests that organic yields are close or superior to conventional yields depending on factors like climate. In a drought year an organic field of corn will yield more - considerably more - than a conventional field; organic fields hold moisture better so they don't need as much water. It simply isn't true that organic yields are lower than conventional yields.