The July issue of O Magazine features a 10-page spread titled “What Are You Eating.” Ranging from a fruitarian to an all-day grazer of junk food, from a carnivore who prefers to hunt and kill his own meat to an omnivore with an appetite for just about anything, the diets in the article are extreme.

We’re alienated from the process of growing and butchering meat, pork and poultry for our personal consumption, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. We’d probably eat a lot less of it if we had to kill the animal or the bird ourselves.

The government’s newest composition comes from a 13-member panel of nutrition and health experts known as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). This elite group drives the direction and content for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, whose 2010 version is expected to arrive later this year.

This month, in addition to care-taking a large yard with vegetable garden, and a dozen young fruit trees, I’m also feeding, watering and daily collecting eggs from 11 laying hens and 2 laying ducks.

With camera gear crammed into his kitchen, we filmed Eric Skokan, the Black Cat Farm and Bistro owner, preparing a dish from his daily-changing menu, one that featured vegetables and greens he’d harvested from the farm that day.

I don’t have a big sweet tooth. I can pass up most desserts without a second thought, but I love fruit. When I was offered the opportunity to interview cookbook author and chef Deborah Madison about her newest cookbook, Seasonal Fruit Desserts, I jumped at the chance.

Direct-to-consumer sales, such as farmers markets, road-side stands, and pick-your-owns, are up from 0.3 percent in 1997 to 0.4 percent in 2007. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it equates to $660 million in sales — pretty impressive. Small farms, or those with less than $50,000 in total sales, benefit from these selling channels more than larger farms, making a case for supporting efforts to sustain and grow these channels to keep small, family farms flourishing.

There are lots of causes for celebration on the farm (and lots of causes for whatever the opposite of that is), but yesterday was truly a day to be grateful for: My son coming down for the summer vacation and the first harvest of strawberries.

If seeing chickens raised in confined, inhumane conditions on an industrial farm disturbs you, then why would you choose to eat those chickens?

Excerpted from Market to Mouth
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Do you ever wonder what’s in your food?
You know, as in preservatives, synthetic flavoring and dyes, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics … the list goes on.
Read the …