Drop the Twinkie, junkie. Just in time for the holidays come these findings from your pals at Scripps Research Institute: Junk food is addictive. Really addictive -- as addictive as heroin.

The paper, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, details what happened when lab...

Caribbean pigeon peas and rice, green beans with jalapeno and garlic, these are nothing the Pilgrims had on their table or even had in their minds at their Thanksgiving, but these dishes made up a happy part of our Thanksgiving weekend's feast of encores.

Some think of leftovers as a...

With frantic schedules, fast food and frozen entrees,Thanksgiving may be the one day of the year we return to the kitchen. And in so doing, we return to ourselves. We connect with the people who matter in our lives by inviting them to our table for a special meal. We...

As if Bjork isn't enough, there's another reason to love Iceland -- now it's the land without McDonald's. The franchise shuttered last month not as a way to protest inhumane treatment of animals or employees, out of fear of food-born illness or concern over obesity -- all valid reasons --...

Okay, I'm going to out myself. I sleep with the enemy. I'm married to a carnivore. He was a carnivore when I married him, I was a vegetarian who has since gone vegan. Call it crazy love.

Occasionally, we have differences of opinion. We work it out. Like last...

The earth is our home. It's been letting us live here rent free for six million years. The least we can do is not trash the place. Please -- that behavior is so '80s rock star. But that, in our ignorance, is what we've been doing.

Food, from sourcing to...

Today, World Pasta Day, we celebrate spaghetti. And spaetzle. And lapsha. And lo mein. Composed of flour, water and pressure via hand or machine, pasta is a genius, border-transcending culinary creation greater than the sum of its parts. We are globally united in our passion for pasta. Each region has...

A friend recently announced she'd rather enjoy animals than eat them. She then passed on homemade roasted organic chicken and happily ate quinoa and broccoli for a dinner rich in protein, vitamins and antioxidants. She didn't miss the chicken at all. She is six years old. The announcement kind of...

Namaste, as yogi know, is Sanskrit for I honor the light in you, you honor the light in me. This week, Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, honors the light in all of us everywhere.

Diwali, a Sanskrit term for a gathering of lamps, celebrates the triumph of good over...

In an old comedy routine, Mel Brooks plays a therapist who advises his patient, "Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it."

I prefer my broccoli to keep its own council. Other people, however, seem to find talking food desirable, enough so that...

Welcome, college freshmen. Your education begins today. What you learn in class matters of course, but the great thing about being a freshman is what you learn outside of it, by observation, by interaction, by trial and error. After a lifetime of parental control, suddenly, you're off-book, off-leash. You teach...

Dear President Obama,

Ahem, a little bailout money, please. Vegetarian organizations need a little financial stimulus in order to advance the issues giving you the greatest concern -- health care, the economy and green initiatives. Personal health, environmental concerns and a decision to economize are, in fact, the top three...

Purple mountain majesties, amber waves of grain, we've got it all, but one of America's greatest natural resources is you. Yeah, you sitting in your lawn chair on the last day of summer. That's why we honor you today. Labor Day is more than a day off, it's a tradition...

"The harvest is past, the summer is over, and yet we are not saved." Jeremiah 8:20.

Don't let this be you. While seasonal despair can take hold as the calender flips from August to September, there is balm in Gilead. We're still reaping the pleasure of summer's harvest,...

The folks of Pullman, Washington have it right. Instead of focusing on the latest celebrity hook up or meltdown, they'd rather pay tribute to something homegrown, honest and fundamentally good for you. That's why they hosted the 21st annual National Lentil Festival this past weekend.

Lentils are the...

We are stardust
We are golden
We are billion year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden

Woodstock, Joni Mitchell

What sounded magical in 1969, the Summer of Love, sounds ominous today, in the Summer of Lipitor. Bits of divine stardust we may...

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack. Jack came from a hard-up family, but he considered himself a savvy, enterprising lad. To prove it, he went to the market, worked a deal and ran home to show his mother his newest acquisition. Beans.

What kind of beans?...

Two weeks back, a friend and I were discussing fresh mint with the passion of true believers. This was made trickier by the fact we do not share a common language. But we bond over many things including an abiding appreciation of mint's underrated culinary attributes and its healing properties....

Remember school lunch? Mystery meatloaf? Slimy spaghetti? Vegetables so gray and overcooked it was impossible to imagine they started life fresh? Despite initiatives from everyone from Alice Waters to South Beach Diet Doctor Arthur Agatston,in most cases, it hasn't gotten better. It's hard to make magic happen in...

For Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, the economy's dark days are over. Then there's the rest of us, for whom no bailout appears forthcoming and for whom the market is very much in flux. There's one market we can trust, though -- the farmers' market.

You can score produce...