American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans), dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent.

Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.

We could have a greener economy, even a greener consumer economy by changing the rules - whether it's by taxing carbon or trading carbon, I'm not sure what - but in the end there's just a fundamental problem with the sheer amount we're consuming.

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.

The things journalists should pay attention to are the issues the political leadership agrees on, rather than to their supposed antagonisms.

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.

The longer I've looked at these questions, of the American diet and the public health crisis that we face because of that diet, the more I've come to the conclusion that the collapse of cooking is a big part of the problem.