I ran across this graphic at Huffington Post under Darya Pino's byline. It's cute, expressing certain, increasingly prevalent truths under the piece's headline, "Is It Food?" This is not a comical diversion; it's a key question of our age.

My cursor came across two revealing graphical representations of how we eat. The first one is from the food service warehouse (a restaurant-equipment supplier) and compares the top 20 and bottom 20 in two categories: calories consumed and income spent on food. 

Of course, Americans consume more calories per day, on average, than anyone on the planet. But comically/perversely, we spend the least per person, on average!

I can't decide which part of this story of foodmanufacture.co.uk bothers me more, but I guess I'll opt for its complete lack of acknowledgment that diabetes is a serious health condition that degrades life on the way to early demise.

From foodnavigator-usa.com: "One ingredient that could have potential in the weight management market was Dow Chemical Co.'s Satisfit, a soluble, low temperature gelling methyl cellulose [emphasis added] which formed a gel mass in the stomach that lingered for more than two hours, unlike conventional methylcellulose, which cleared the stomach rapidly.

Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book. In this one, she talks about those who choose to be vegetarian.

Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book.

Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book:

Nobody should need science to prove the obvious, but plenty of studies do show that regularly eating cheaply produced fast food and processed snack foods slaps on extra pounds that increase the risks of diabetes, cardiovascular harm, joint problems, and many cancers. As a country we're officially over the top: The majority of our food dollars buy those cheap calories, andd most of our citizens are medically compromised by weight and inactivity. The incidence of obesity-associated diabetes has more than doubled since 1990, with children the fastest-growing class of victims. ... One out of every three dollars we spend on health care, by some recent estimates, is paying for the damage of bad eating habits. One out of every seven specically pays to assuage (but not cure) the mulitple heartbreaks of diabetes — kidley failure, stokes, blindness, amputated limbs. [Page 116]

This paragraph, coming a just a few words after the previous one, underlines the false economy of choosing what we eat based primarily on cost. If it were any other commodity, that might be more defensible, but food is by far the one commodity that determines health, vigor, longevity. It is just staggering to realize that this obvious fact has become so undervalued: You can get a pretty good deal on a truckload of sawdust, but you wouldn't eat it just because it was cheap.

My story on Patti Small, who takes her ever-more-popular service of sharpening knives to farmers' markets in Greater Boston, was in the Globe today. You may recall that I also featured her on my blog not too long ago.

I was at a kids' birthday party a week or so ago, discussing the relative merits of juice with a handful of other parents.

Yes, I lead an exciting life.

I was one of those who expressed qualified praise for McDonald’s Happy Meal changes: Apple slices, smaller French fries, slightly better beverage options. Other commenters, particularly “Appetite For Profit” author Michele Simon, drew different conclusions, which she discusses in a blog post headlined, “Who Put McDonald’s In Charge of Kids’ Health?" at appetiteforprofit.com.

I don’t know her, but I follow her Twitter feed and respect what she writes, including this one, even though I find enough disagreement in it that I feel compelled to rejoin, even on a day when I should be writing other stuff.

Let’s start with the headline: To my mind, we did. Doing nothing more than taking full advantage of the capitalist process, they advertised and promoted until we made them, via our billions and billions of purchases, the leader in fast food. They could have spent all that promotional cash and if we hadn’t bought what they were peddling, they would have failed. But we have bought, and now they have enormous influence.