At least a few words are due AmpleHarvest.org, which allows food pantries and food growers — including backyard growers who can't eat everything when the harvest comes in — to connect with each other. The site lists 4,100 pantries in all 50 states that accept gresh produce and is still growing.

If you have more than you can use, what better solution than to look up where you can share with families in need?

Here’s a report from the intersection of legumes and insanity, or, in a single word, nuts. I have a checkered history with one, and I have the other. I went through this intersection last week and the tale illustrates what food addiction feels like.

So where to begin! How ‘bout: Yes, it’s true that I do have antipathy toward many nutritionists and registered dietitians, because too often I’ve been advised, or heard friends advised, to eat moderately, without ruling out any foods — because the advisers think that advice is sound for everyone, and it’s not.

I spent my day yesterday about 45 minutes from my home, driving from gym to gym to leave notices of my speaking engagement in support of “Fat Boy Thin Man” in that region about three weeks hence. (6:30 pm., Ames Free Library, 53 Main St., North Easton, Mass.) The response was very enthusiastic, except for one guy who seemed not to care where I put the poster because, I’m convinced, he was going to remove it as soon as I was gone.

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.

A strong segment of dieting wisdom holds that people who want to lose weight shouldn’t rule out any dishes or substances, because people won’t stick with any plan that leaves them feeling deprived.

Though I concede that that’s not totally, completely wrong, I do feel great frustration with it.

If someone wants to make a change, something has to change, does it not? In this context, there are essentially only two tools — eat less, or eat different — and this anti-deprivation dogma removes one of them.

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.

Almost a year ago, I wrote aboutNicholas Christakis's Ted Talk, which showcased his research about connectedness in social networks.

What would have been my mild interest was heightened by his using obesity as an example: He said his research showed that if your friends were obese, your chances of being obese were 45 percent higher. Even more freaky was his suggestion that if friends of your friends whom you'd never met were obese, your chances were 25 percent higher, and that you had a 10 percent greater chance of being overweight if your friends' friends' friends were.

Turns out, his conclusions haven't been accepted into scientific fact just yet. Writing yesterday in the Boston Globe, reporter Carolyn Y. Johnson recapped the significant doubt that has bubbled up:

Dr. Marty Lerner, chief at Milestones in Recovery, a South Florida treatment center for eating disorders, will be the radio tonight beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can hear a live stream of the show here.

Watch this and then tell me you didn't like it. I can't imagine...