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.

It's been a mystery to me and a disappointment why conversation about health care reform hasn't turned more attention to the subject of food.

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.

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

Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture when we speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture) so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)? It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of.

Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath.

High-quality food is better for your health.