The best farming systems are ones where animals and plants are put into a synergistic relationship.

Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

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.

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

Another day it occurred to me that time as we know it doesn't exist in a lawn, since grass never dies or is allowed to flower and set seed. Lawns are nature purged of sex or death. No wonder Americans like them so much.

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.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.