The heroes of our flavor-of-the-day news cycles are not those who prove to be right or actually know what they are talking about. The heroes on any given day are the iconoclasts, conspiracy theorists, and -- just plain wing nuts. Affliction is the plat du jour, and these -- its master chefs.

I care deeply about the truth about food, because this particular truth could set us substantially free from the threat of chronic disease and premature death. Chewing and swallowing the truth about food could add years to our lives, and lives to our years.

My career is devoted to the use of lifestyle practices -- and above all, diet and physical activity -- to the promotion of health and the prevention of disease. Feet and forks, along with fingers that do or don't hold cigarettes, are well established as the master levers of medical destiny.

There is an intrinsic problem with measuring the quality of a system by how well it conforms to what you already believe. Such a system gets bonus points for agreeing with you -- even when you are wrong.

The National Consumers League, claiming to represent consumers' interests, issued a press release this week announcing they had submitted a complaint to the FDA, asking the agency to banish NuVal from the nation's supermarkets.

Pink slime happens to have been outed. But what other things that you never knew you never knew were in your food are still finding their way into you, and your kids?

This week, Wal-Mart announced the release of its home-grown, front-of-pack nutrition guidance system. Can we possibly be that gullible? If so, we probably all deserve to be eating whatever the big companies selling food tell us we should.

Under the halo effect of "natural and organic," Whole Foods shoppers may feel they can't go wrong nutritionally. I beg to differ.