The corporatization of something as basic and intimate as eating is, for many of us today, a good place to draw the line.

Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid somewhere. And if it isn't paid at the cash register, it's charged to the environment or to the public purse in the form of subsidies. And it's charged to your health.

I have no scientific training at all. I was an English major in school. Everything I learned about science I've learned as a journalist would, finding out what I needed to know.

It's estimated that about 30 percent of the increase in grain prices could be attributed to the decision to embrace biofuels, particularly corn-based ethanol. It has done nothing for climate change and the business is in real trouble now with the collapse of oil prices. It's completely dependent on a dollar subsidy and tariff from the government.

We used to eat economically. One of the things that happened is that we lost the cultural skills that used to allow people to eat well cheaply. For example making three or four meals from a chicken, rather than buying chicken breasts.

Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.

In 2008, a year of supposed 'food crisis', we grew enough food to feed 11 billion people. Most of it was not eaten by humans as food, however.