The soybean itself is a notably inauspicious staple food; it contains a whole assortment of "antinutrients" - compounds that actually block the body's absorption of vitamins and minerals, interfere with the hormonal system, and prevent the body from breaking down the proteins of the soy itself.

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

I really do think that cooking is very important. It's really important for the farmers because it means you're going to be buying real food and not processed food, so that means the farmers will capture more of your food dollar.

People forget that eating represents their most profound engagement with the natural world. Through agriculture is how we change the world, more than anything else we do.

It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American): to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather than subtraction.

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.

There are certain products that it's worth buying organic just because the alternatives have so much pesticide. There's a list of the dirty dozen that you can get off the Web. Strawberries, potatoes. A handful of crops that have very high pesticide residues if you don't buy organic. If you eat that a lot, that's a good place to invest.