The biggest news in the kid-and-food world yesterday was an announcement in which Disney promised to phase out the advertising of junk food on its child-directed television channels, web sites and radio stations. The initiative should be enthusiastically applauded.

Inciting grassroots involvement in food system issues is critical -- yet, until the pink slime debacle, consumer uprisings have mostly eluded the movement. Why did this issue create such a powerful consumer reaction?

We're eating the same way an earlier, much healthier generation ate -- my grandmother's generation. They healthfully subsisted on a steady of diet of mostly home-cooked, real, whole foods (some of them grown in their own gardens) with periodic treats.

What is profitable is not necessarily edible; food doesn't get along well with assembly lines, farm-chemical runoff and antibiotics. Its quality deteriorates, as do the soils from which it springs and the health of those to whom it is dished out.